Two months ago: "Don't let him get away! Fire! Fire!" One spaceship chased another through the thinning starfield. Ahead lay emptiness, except for the faint whirlpools of distant galaxies. "I AM firing! I'm just not hitting him!" replied the red-headed woman, slamming the weapons board before her in frustration. The fleeing ship managed to dodge two more plasma bursts. A blinking signal on the pursuers' controls signaled when the fugitive ship crossed the invisible line which, by age-old consensus, marked the edge of the galaxy. The two pursuing women sighed. "DAMN it! Now he's out of our jurisdiction! He's headed out into inter-galactic space! This is the first time we've ever failed to solve one of our cases!" "But, on the plus side, nobody got hurt, either," the calmer woman replied with a pleased tone, tossing her long black hair to one side. "Not good enough!" The red-head slammed her right fist into her open left palm. As if to deliberately make them even angrier, the fugitive ship ejected a small message-pod, which drifted back towards the decelerating pursuer. The red-haired woman, angry, took aim at the pod. "Any reason not to burn that pod immediately, Yuri?" "Impulsive as ever, Kei?" the other woman replied with fake sweetness. "After all, it MIGHT be a signed confession, or something else we can use." "Might be a bomb, too." "Well, scan it, then." Eventually the Lovely Angels retrieved the message-pod and opened it. Holographic words appeared in the air above the capsule. "What the hell is this?!" Kei screamed in frustration, hammering her control panel. "'I, Rikudo Koshi, do hereby give my permission... episode of...' WHAT? What is this scum of the galaxy talking about?" Yuri frowned in puzzlement. "And what is a 'Vinge fusion?' I've never heard of it." The two women looked at each other and shrugged blankly. - - - - - - - - - - Sketches of Tenchi 13: Tenchi's Excellent Adventure A Tenchi Muyo! OAV/MnE fanfic by HKMiller 11 August 2006 Featuring characters created by Hiroki Hayashi and Masaki Kajishima, also copyright AiC and Pioneer. Certain concepts and plot elements derived from Vernor Vinge's Hugo-winning novel "A Fire Upon the Deep"; other characters and situations derived from Rikudo Koshi; still other characters are copyright Studio Gonzo in Japan and Funimation in the US. Incidental characters are from or inspired by other sources. - - - - - - - - - - Five weeks ago: Excel paused in the midst of her ruminations. Il Palazzo was all-knowing, all-good, and all-deserving of her instant obedience and complete adoration, of course, but there were immediate matters demanding her attention. Rikudo Koshi, the man who'd awakened her, was dead now, her first victim. Of his spaceship's passengers, she had the other adult safely imprisoned, but the two children had crept back aboard the spaceship, and were preparing to take off. Worse, there was something missing, something the man had placed aboard his spaceship before she'd been more than half awake. She didn't know for sure what it was, but strongly suspected that she'd better stop that ship. Aboard the ship, Sandora was laboriously running down the pre-flight checklist. He nodded, and Poemi, carefully consulting the instruction manual, hit the anti-grav. The ship began to rise from the asteroid's dark, rugged plain. Excel immediately began filling all comm channels with probes of the ship. Surely there must be one unsecured port. Ah-ha! An infrared sensor on one of the external airlocks was missing the latest security patches! Excel was half-way through the logic needed to take control of the fleeing ship when suddenly a fragment of the code she was assembling reminded her irresistably of Il Palazzo. Immediately, all comm channels filled instead with paeans of praise to her creator. Rikudo Koshi's spaceship, carrying Sandora and Poemi (and maybe something else), made it safely away. - - - - - - - - - - Five days ago: On the planet Aineas, the main doors of the towering skyscraper which housed the headquarters of the Galactic Organization for Tariffs and Trade (GOTT) swished open. A blinking, pale man stumbled in and looked around. Seeing a pair of young- looking, uniformed girls manning an information desk on the far side of the lobby, he headed in that direction. "Maybe you should go home, Lumiere," the taller of the two girls was saying worriedly as she hovered over the shorter. "You don't usually get headaches. Maybe you're really sick." The shorter girl shook her head and waved the taller off. "No, really, Eclair, I'll be fine." As the visitor approached, Eclair, a well-build redhead apparently in her late teens, looked up and frowned, internally readying herself for action. The man looked almost as if he'd been stitched together from a bunch of long-dead corpses and somehow re-animated. And, in her experience, unusual-looking visitors to GOTT often meant trouble. Lumiere, a short, slender girl apparently about ten, with light violet hair, just ignored all this. When the man reached the counter, she looked at him carefully, blinked twice, and then smiled at him pleasantly. "Welcome to GOTT. How may we help you, sir?" "Errh..." the visitor cleared his voice, which sounded as if it hadn't been used for a while. "That is... actually, I think I'm here to get help. My name is... Pedro. That's it, Pedro. Something... something's happening... very dangerous to galactic civilization as we know it." Eclair and Lumiere glanced at each other, perplexed, and shrugged in mutual incomprehension. At that moment, their earrings tinkled. The voice of their chief came to them clearly. "Eclair, Lumiere, come to my office. And bring your visitor." - - - - - - - - - - Now: "Hey, you two!" Washuu, over breakfast, indicated the two newcomers, Kei and Yuri. "What's up with all this communication interference over on your side of the galaxy?" "It's not our fault!" Kei and Yuri replied simultaneously. Washuu blinked. "I never said it was. Now, what's the story?" "Yuri's the techie geek; let her tell it," smirked Kei nastily. "SOME of us actually studied in school," smiled Yuri back with transparently-fake sweetness. "But really, all we know is that some new entity out in the 'Transcend' is causing havok in interstellar communications, filling every channel with insane babble continuously." "Hmmm... and this has been going on for how long? Rogue transcendental entities normally age and die very quickly." "About six weeks, I think," Yuri replied, thinking. "Yes, that's right, it started while we were still on our way back from the rim." Utter silence fell. Kiyone and Aeka gave the Pair a leisurely dirty look. Tenchi continued to chew, looking around in puzzlement. "Dare I ask what you were doing on the rim?" asked Washuu drily. "We were chasing this scumbag, but he got away into intergalactic space..." started Kei. "...also known as the 'Transcend'..." interrupted Washuu. "He claimed he had located the whereabouts of an ancient ruin on an asteroid way out there," added Yuri, "but couldn't be bothered with obtaining a license for tech archaeology or paying for the mandatory precautions." "...and many 'ancient ruins' in the transcend would, of course, be dormant self-aware computer-based entities, built utilizing techniques impossible to construct or operate inside the gravitational well of a galaxy," finished Washuu. "So, in other words, your fugitive may have reached this ruin, and may have reactivated it, and it may now be responsible for the communication problems." Kei and Yuri looked sheepish. "Well, that's just one hypothesis, of course." "Are there any clues in the 'insane babble' as to what this new entity might want?" Kiyone asked. "As I understand it, it's all gibberish about serving someone named 'Il-Palazzo'," answered Yuri, before adding an impish "Lady Noike." Kiyone reflexively snapped, "Don't call me that!" Washuu's and Sasami's eyes widened simultaneously. They glanced at each other, then Sasami whispered, "But that was over a billion years ago! You don't think... that he somehow managed to resurrect Excel?" "The counter-agent! We have to find the counter-agent!" Washuu replied in a whisper. "The one I built back then! It would take way too long to build another one; galactic civilization might not last that long!" The two girls finally looked up from their huddle to notice the rest of the people in the room staring at them, except for Alielle, who was pretending to buff her nails while ogling Kei and Yuri from beneath her eyelashes. - - - - - - - - - - Four days ago: "...and of course I will instantly obey all of your orders, Your Utmost Excellency, because your little Excel always obeys all of your orders, except when they contradict each other, which yours never do, because of your supreme all-knowingness..." Excel paused momentarily. Was there something she was supposed to do now, for the greater glory of her lord and master? Oh, yes. Those few automatons she could spare from the task of building all-channel communication relays had just completed construction of a new, heavily-armed spaceship, the first of a vast armada of conquest. And she'd also finished brainwashing her prisoner. That meant, Excel supposed, that it was probably time to send Nabeshin off into space, chasing after Rikudo's original ship. If that ship contained anything like what she suspected, it must be located immediately, or Il-Palazzo's grand vision would be in danger. - - - - - - - - - - Three days ago: "He's what?" Eclair asked blankly. "Under someone's control?" "There's no doubt about it," Lumiere replied, her hands spread out above a bank of sensor readouts. The two girls stood before a window, looking into a laboratory where Pedro lay strapped into a chair, bristling with probes and other detection devices inserted into various parts of his anatomy. "He just keeps saying 'Oh, No' over and over again," Eclair observed. "That hardly seems dangerous." "His 'body' was assembled from a selection of long-frozen corpses, it appears," Lumiere announced. "And he has considerable organic and hypertrophic circuitry buried inside his body. But the interesting part is the network traffic he's sending and receiving." "And why is it interesting?" Eclair sighed, rolling her eyes. "The bandwidth being used is enormous, for one thing. But most of the traffic is to and from a distant point in the 'Transcend'." "He's a spy for Excel, then," the GOTT chief, Eclipse, remarked. "Good thing we caught him." "No, I think Pedro here is being directed, and occasionally completely animated, by another transcendental entity, one of the most mysterious ones we know." "We can't take the chance that you're wrong," Eclipse countered. "And even if you're right, any transcendental entity might be allied with Excel by now." "Hyatt wouldn't be. Hyatt is an old-timer as transcendental entities go. Mostly such entities just evolve and die, very quickly by our standards, but Hyatt, according to our records, periodically comes back to life. We have records of this Hyatt being active for short periods of time from up to a hundred thousand years ago." Eclair gave Lumiere a sharp look as she whistled. Eclipse simply looked impatient. "Anything more?" Lumiere took a deep breath. "Well, our official records only go back that far, of course. But I remember having conversations with Hyatt from long before that. LONG before." Eclair raised one eyebrow. "THAT far back?" "Yes. I think this Hyatt might be a offshoot of the ancient Mar Shan civilization. Or maybe even..." Suddenly Pedro looked right at the two girls and spoke in a voice very unlike his normal one. "Eclair, Lumiere, listen closely. Excel must be turned off, or no-one's sanity is safe. Even now she is killing me, starving my consciousness of the bandwidth I need to think. You two must take Pedro and go at once. I will direct you, once en route. The Universe itself wills that you do this." "But I do not!" Eclipse insisted. "This is none of GOTT's business! You two are to stay out of this matter, and we'll leave this 'Pedro' imprisoned here so he can't do any harm. These are my orders. Disobey me on this, and I'll not only dismiss you two from GOTT, but see that you're both outlawed!" Eclair and Lumiere glanced at each other, both smiling faintly. "Again?" Eclair asked whimsically. "Again," Lumiere nodded. - - - - - - - - - - Now: "All right." Washuu sighed in resignation. "I'll explain. Il-Palazzo was a protege of ours, mostly of Tokimi's..." "Washuu..." Sasami crossed her arms. "..Okay, maybe more my protoge when you get right down to it," Washuu amended sheepishly. "Anyway, similar to the way Kagato eventually rebelled against me..." "...And he kind of looked like Kagato as well," Sasami opined, finger to chin in thought. "I wonder if Washuu has a weakness for pince-nez and shoulder-pads?" Washuu paused just long enough to direct a dirty look at Sasami, then continued. "Il-Palazzo took what I'd taught him and began to pursue his own agenda. He wanted to conquer the entire Macrocosmic All, but his way of going about this was to start small: first, he'd take over this Universe, and to do that he'd start by taking over this galaxy, his first objective. To this end, he constructed an immense self-aware computer out in intergalactic space, applying advanced techniques which are only possible out there in very, very flat space, and then having his first computer design and build a second, it build a third, and so forth. Eventually he ended up with Excel, the most obnoxious transcendental entity ever created. Excel brought a crushing end to civilization in all nearby galaxies back then before we managed to shut her down." Tenchi wrinkled his brow. "And how does this... Excel... threaten Galactic civilization? Can't we just fight it?" "Assuming that Excel behaves the same way now that she did back then, Excel will certainly TRY for physical conquest of the galaxy. But Excel actually turned out to be rather inept at that. The real threat was posed by this insane babble, which just grew over time and spread to other channels of communication, eventually including telepathic channels. It got to the point where no sentient entity in the galaxy could put two coherent thoughts together without being interrupted by Excel, ranting about how hard she was working to please Il Palazzo." "So why didn't you just blast her? Or blow up her asteroid?" Ryouko asked. "Three reasons. First, she's extremely hard to damage seriously. She's much more invulnerable than you are, for instance. Second, have YOU ever tried to find one lone, cold asteroid in the middle of intergalactic space, especially when some entity is trying to hide it from detection?" asked Washuu sarcastically. "And opening a subspace portal into flat space accurately is more difficult than you think. Space is slippery out there; there's no gravitational gradient, so there's nothing to anchor the far end of your portal to." "Edward projects 33 percent probability that asteroid is somewhere within a specific volume of space ten times size of this galaxy," added Radical Edward. "Ah," Tenchi nodded his understanding. "Those were the main problems I solved in developing the counter- agent, of course," Washuu added. "It has the ability to locate Excel and teleport right to her, and then has a specialized attack which drops her central core, the seat of her consciousness, into a black hole." Tenchi turned his head, looking at the other members of his household: Ryouko, Aeka, Sasami, Mihoshi, Kiyone, Mayuka, Edward, Alielle, and the newcomers Kei and Yuri. "Are we all at risk, then?" "Well, no, of course not, Tenchi. There's no way for Excel to harm you, Sasami, Alielle, or I, and probably Mayuka; her telepathic assaults affect only purely three-dimensional minds. Now, I suppose we could experiment with hooking Mihoshi up to a telepathic amplifier, to see if she can counteract Excel..." "You'd subject the entire galaxy to Mihoshi's thought processes?!" Kiyone interrupted, appalled. "Would you MIND letting me finish?" Washuu countered. "...but frankly, our best bet is to just locate and use my original counter-agent." "Okay, so where is this counter-agent? Somewhere deep in your lab?" Tenchi wondered. Washuu snorted. "No, activating it causes it to teleport to whereever Excel is, and I never bothered to retrieve it way back then. So it was probably on the same asteroid as Excel when Excel woke up, and may still be there." A panicked uproar ensued. "But then wouldn't Miss Excel have immediately destroyed it?!" Aeka cried out. "Not necessarily. My design also incorporates advanced predictive and avoidance algorithms, so if there was any chance to do so, the counter-agent would have fled the asteroid the moment Excel woke up. Let's see..." Washuu muttered as she began typing on a keyboard which hadn't been there a moment before. "Edward has news," the red-headed waif currently somersaulting in mid-air right above Tenchi announced. "'Excel Watch' chat room participants are tracking a ship from that area of the 'Transcend' heading deep into the heart of the galaxy. Wild speculation abounds about why Excel is chasing it with another ship." "Right." Washuu put away her keyboard. "That has to be it. Let's go. Whose ship this time?" "We haven't traveled in Kiyone's new ship yet," Tenchi remarked, referring to the third-generation Jurai ship Kiyone had recently received as part of Seto's campaign to change Kiyone's name. Kiyone looked nervous. "Everyone be careful! Kyoko's still very young!" "Now if I can just remember how the counter-agent worked..." Washuu's voice drifted off, even as green bubbles enveloped everyone and transported them a grassy meadow within Kyoko. - - - - - - - - - - On a lonely hilltop very far away from Earth, Menchi watched a very large red metal bird land nearby, close to the ruins of an old castle. What WAS that thing? It was obviously artificial, but who had ever imagined building an artifact that could fly? The other dogs around him watched closely as the hatch opened. Two strange creatures, somehow walking about awkwardly upon two legs, emerged and began gesturing at the metal bird. Menchi noticed that the artifact must be even bigger than he thought, unless the two creatures were very much smaller than a normal dog. Creatures who could create such an artifact must have knowledge possessed by no dog in the entire world! Abruptly there was a commotion behind Menchi, who glanced back. A pack of large, brutal-looking armored dogs were biting and snarling their way through the observers. From the insignia they wore, they were Scar's enforcers. Menchi shrunk back. Scar was a brutal overlord, ruler of several nearby valleys, with a reputation for ruthlessness. It was no surprise that Scar would be interested in exploiting the knowledge to be gained from these strange creatures. Menchi wondered if there were any way to keep it out of Scar's hands. - - - - - - - - - - "Anything new?" Washuu asked, walking back up the grassy knoll from the stream where she'd been helping Sasami and Mihoshi bathe Mayuka. Kiyone, Kei, and Yuri manned various communication consoles, trying to keep track of the situation. Ed lay on her back in the grass, chewing straw, dataglasses over her eyes, twirling her toes in the air, arms behind her head. Tenchi just paced worriedly up and down, ignoring Ryouko's and Aeka's attempts to lure him into the tall grass, and Alielle's similar attempts on them. "Excel has invaded the far edge of the galaxy in force," Yuri announced. Kei frowned. "That's an amazing number of ships to be coming from apparently-empty intergalactic space. But they're not being coordinated very well; the local resistance forces would be winning handily, except..." "...that the defenders can't communicate." Yuri finished. "All conventional channels on the far periphery are now useless. They're re-routing communications around the area of outage." "Besides us, there's a couple of other ships chasing the original one from the Transcend," Kiyone announced. "One's a GOTT cruiser, colleagues Mihoshi and I have worked with before. A bit young, but they seemed competent. More so than some galactic agents I might mention." Kei and Yuri shot quick glares at Kiyone, who played innocent. "About whom do you think Lady Noike might be referring?" Yuri asked Kei rhetorically. "No idea what Her Ladyship Noike could be talking about," Kei replied. Kiyone gnashed her teeth. "Other ship is running silent," Ed added, twirling her toes in the air and smiling into her datagoggles. "Chatroom analysts have I.D.'d as extremely high-tech warship. Backtracked into Transcend, area now controlled by Excel." Washuu frowned. "She sent just one ship?" "Ed extrapolates rate of increase of communication relay devices dedicated to broadcasting paeans of praise to Il Palazzo must be absorbing industrial capacity equivalent to small galaxy. Plus invasion fleet." "...so one ship is all she could spare." Washuu finished. "Ed thinks ship is even more formidable than chatroom consensus believes." The waif frowned. "Chatroom correctly identified neutrino flux for phased zero-space reality cannons, but nobody picked up the microscopic oscillations in the ship's hyperthrust output. Close match to one of Momma's ideas for building lab like yours." Washuu's eyes widened. "It's closing on the GOTT ship!" Kiyone cried. Washuu sighed. "Oh, fragglerack. Step on it, Kiyone." - - - - - - - - - - In a dense thicket very far away from Earth, Menchi watched the 'boy' being escorted by an entire platoon of Scar's uniformed troops. It looked hopeless. He and a few like-minded dogs had succeeded in spiriting the 'girl' away from Scar, and had learned to communicate with her, but Scar was draining the 'boy' dry, and learning all he could from the 'ship', even as his goons dismantled it piece by piece and carried it away. The 'boy''s eager voice carried across the distance separating him from Menchi, who struggled to understand what the 'boy' was saying. "I didn't really understand how to pilot the ship, and Poemi didn't either, so I don't quite know how we got to this planet, or even exactly where this planet is. Poemi's not very technical; she wants to be a voice actress when she grows up. But I wanna be an animator, so I have to learn all about computers and high- res holovid and real-time rendering and stuff. I don't know how anti-gravity works, but I can tell you all about how you render light as it moves through an anti-grav field!" - - - - - - - - - - The "La Muse" shuddered. Alarms sounded inside the ship. "There's another ship coming up behind us!" Eclair shouted. "It's firing at us!" "I can't get a reading on its armament!" Lumiere replied. "On screen! Hail the other ship!" The main screen of La Muse changed from space to a human face, a strange-looking man wearing a bright red jacket and sporting a huge hairdo. "'zat you, Eclair? Lumiere? Lookin' a bit different these days, girls, but then you always do. Long time no see!" "Nabeshin?!" Eclair shouted. "Why are you shooting at us?" Lumiere cried. "Well, got no choice, really. Friends or no friends, I gotta do whatever's best for Excel, ya know? Sayonara, ladies!" Lumiere just stared at the screen, appalled. Eclair clenched a fist. "We're no pushovers! If you've been corrupted by Excel, I'll shoot you down myself!" "Good luck trying," Nabeshin shook his head sadly. "Excel designed this ship with transcendental organic technology. This ship just produces any weapons it needs on demand." The screen changed to an external view of Nabeshin's ship. Twin pylons were extruding themselves to either side of the ship even as the girls watched, soon growing larger than the original ship, and lengthening into twin barrels pointing at La Muse. "Transcendental technology..." Pedro whispered, standing behind the girls. "How could something like THAT work this deep inside the galaxy?" Eclair demanded, pounding a fist on her console. Lumiere just shook her head. "Our shields won't withstand that." On screen, the twin barrels started glowing. Eclair and Lumiere starting steering a desperate evasive action. "Tune primary shields to band 1102.42," Pedro said. Lumiere glanced back at Pedro, one eyebrow raised. "Tuning now." "And adjust secondaries to oscillate rapidly between 704.9 and 705.3." "What?" Eclair asked, half-turning around. "Just do it," Lumiere whispered. "It must be knowledge from Hyatt. It's our only hope!" - - - - - - - - - - Nabeshin grinned as his first shot hit La Muse's starboard engine nacelle and the aft part of the main body. "Got 'em. That ship'll blow completely in thirty seconds." Just then a rapidly blinking light on his console caught Nabeshin's attention. "Another ship coming up behind me?" He rapidly re-oriented his ship towards the newcomer and fired a second shot, only to watch his shot stopped cold by six streamers of pure light. "What in the twelve cold hells of Zehru are those? NOTHING stops these guns like that!" Nabeshin snarled, but engaged his main engine and fled. "All the shielding in the universe won't help you if I reach the target first!" - - - - - - - - - - Three globes of green light engulfed Eclair, Lumiere, and Pedro just as La Muse exploded. The three reappeared on a grassy meadow somewhere else. "Ah! I remember you two!" Mihoshi said brightly, holding up Mayuka. "See them, Mayuka? These girls are Lumi-chan and Ec- chan! Aren't they cute?" Lumiere groaned in pain. Eclair caught her and gently lowered her onto the soft grass. "What's wrong?" Lumiere grimaced, holding her head. "It's Excel. She just turned the volume up a notch. I'm trying to shut it out, but her babble is just so inane..." "So these girls are also agents of a galaxy-wide organization?" Tenchi asked as he advanced over the grass. "Like Kei, Yuri, Kiyone, and Mihoshi?" "Tenchi, let me introduce you," Kiyone announced. "These are Eclair and Lumiere. They work for GOTT, which means they normally work on trade-related matters." "Where are we?" Eclair looked around her in wonder. "We weren't within transport range of any planets. And it seems familiar..." "This is my new ship," Kiyone told Eclair smugly. "A Juraian ship. We're inside the central unit." "A Juraian ship?" Eclair clapped her hands in delight. "I've never been in one before!" Sasami tilted her head in puzzlement. "Lumiere? That name seems familiar. Have we met?" "Eclair too," Washuu muttered as stared at the newcomers. "But your appearances aren't ringing any bells." Eclair blushed. "Well, we do change them every once in a while." "You do?" Kiyone asked. "You've always looked like that as long as I've known you, and Mihoshi and I worked with you five years ago." Tenchi felt a momentary impulse to remark that Lumiere only looked about ten years old, but managed to suppress it. "Oh! I remember them as well!" Aeka remarked. "Miss Eclair and Miss Lumiere visited Jurai when I was a little girl, about Sasami's age." Ryouko added, "And I remember fighting them back when I was working for Kagato. They look a little different now; did you two change your hair colors?." "No way. It couldn't be," Washuu stared at the two girls, stunned. "Impossible." "Loom'iyieri'ylliani? Ek'klare'sthivst?" Sasami whispered. "Is it really you? After all this time?" Eclair's eyes widened. "You know those names? Who ARE you?" Lumiere's eyes opened. "Tsunami! Washuu! That's why this place seems so familiar. You've come back to us!" Sasami smiled sheepishly, then appeared to narrow to a vertical line, which lengthened, then widened back out into Tsunami. Washuu simply replaced her preteen body with her adult body with no observable lapse of time. - - - - - - - - - - on a bare hilltop very far away from Earth, Menchi stood beside Poemi under the trees, watching as another large metal bird descended from the sky. This one was black, and very ugly, Menchi thought. The 'ship' settled to the ground. A door opened. "Poppa!" cried Poemi, as she darted out of cover, arms open, to embrace Nabeshin. Nabeshin extended his arms, a big grin on his face, waiting for Poemi to get near, then drew back one arm and struck her across the face. "Poppa?" Poemi cried, huddled on the ground, as she looked up at Nabeshin uncertainly. "Poppet, I live and work only for Excel now," Nabeshin explained, standing sternly with crossed arms. "My mistress needs to make sure that the ship you came on, and everything inside of it, including you, are completely destroyed. First you will tell me what has happened to it; my instruments indicate that most of the interior is missing." "No, Poppa!" Poemi cried in horror. "You can't be working for that monster!" "But I am," Nabeshin said casually, even as he reached into his afro and pulled out a large plasma rifle. "My mistress gave me the ability to do this." At that moment, Menchi darted out of hiding and bit Nabeshin on the rear end. Nabeshin dropped his weapon, then turned to strike Menchi, who let go and darted away into the nearest thicket. Poemi took advantage of the distraction to run away as fast as she could, sobbing. "I can't believe Poppa would do this! It must be that Excel's fault! She'll pay for doing this to my Poppa!" - - - - - - - - - - "When I say _very_ long ago, I mean VERY long ago," Washuu said impatiently. "She means," Tsunami explained gently, "that Loom'iyieri'ylliani and Ek'klare'sthivst were two of my very dearest friends and companions about a billion years ago, the last time my sisters and I were all active in this galaxy." "But they were trees back then, not humanoid," Washuu continued. "Which is why we didn't recognize them immediately." "Well, as we said, we do change our bodies now and then," Eclair explained, shrugging her shoulders. "When they wear out or become unrepairable." "In fact, you two helped us defeat Excel originally, didn't you?" Tsunami said. Lumiere groaned. "Yes, I haven't had this particular headache since back then. I should have recognized the feeling." "By the way," Washuu began, looking abashed and pushing the tips of her fingers back and forth, "I don't suppose either of you remember clearly how my counter-agent actually works?" "Nope," Eclair replied. "You never explained most of the mechanism to us," Lumiere offered. "I was afraid of that." "Didn't you explain most of it to your other assistant back then?" Tsunami asked. "That nice, polite girl android? I don't remember her name." Washuu looked sheepish. "Neither do I." "Ah, we've reached our goal," Kiyone announced. "The other two ships are currently on the planet below us. We're heading down." "Ed has a lock on Excel's emissary, outside his ship. No life signs from ship." Kiyone nodded. "Kyoko, if you please..." One narrow rod extruded itself from Kyoko's wooden exterior and fired, vaporizing Nabeshin's ship. - - - - - - - - - - Tenchi's party beamed down to the ground next to where Nabeshin stood, gnashing his teeth over the destruction of his spaceship. Nabeshin whirled, yanking two plasma blasters from within his 'fro, but Ryouko simply teleported over and destroyed both with a single sweep of her lightsword. Aeka touched her hairpiece, and Nabeshin was imprisoned within a transparent forcefield. "Oh, it's Nabeshin!" Mihoshi noted, holding up Mayuka to see better. "Nabeshin, why are YOU working for Excel?" Yuri asked as she and Kei approached. "Can we free him from Excel's control?" asked Lumiere of Washuu and Edward, who were scanning him with a variety of instruments. Washuu frowned. Edward's eyes widened enormously and she clapped the soles of her feet together in delight. "Sub-molecular infiltration! One hundred percent complete! Edward has never seen anything like it!" Washuu clicked her instruments shut, perturbed. "That... might take a while," she commented to Lumiere. "Make sure you hold him," she added to Aeka. "Now then," Washuu turned to survey the nearby woods. At that moment, a slim, flame-haired young girl, accompanied by a small white dog, tentatively stepped out into the open. "Are you here to rescue us?" the girl asked. "Sure!" Tenchi remarked. "Err... Who are you?" "I'm Poemi Watenabe. Nabeshin," Poemi indicated their prisoner, "is my father, but he's changed! Excel must have done something to him!" "Now THERE'S an understatement," Washuu muttered under her breath. "Miss Watenabe," Aeka began. "Just Poemi is fine." "Miss Poemi, then," Aeka continued. "While we are certainly happy to rescue you, and any other helpless victims as well, we are also looking for a certain..." Aeka turned to Washuu. "How would you describe it?" "Err..." Washuu replied. "A dense, silver, ever-shifting cloud, about my size, which should have been on your spaceship," Pedro interrupted in a voice not his own. Washuu raised one eyebrow, then snapped her fingers. A yellow sphere with two blinking eyes suddenly appeared on Pedro's head. "Oh! You have to free Sandora, then! The bad dogs are holding him prisoner!" Poemi said to Aeka. "San- Sandora?" Pedro asked in his own voice, very thick. Washuu raised the other eyebrow. "I'll get him," Ryouko announced. "Where is he being held?" Menchi whined something complicated at Poemi, who nodded and began translating. "Three valleys towards the rising sun stands a huge stone fortress, surrounded by a moat, which no dog has ever swum! The walls are ten paces thick. The doors are barred with iron and guarded by ten snarling dobermen who never sleep! In one of the corner towers the boy must be held, though which no dog can say..." Ryouko disappeared. Five minutes later she was back, with Sandora. "Dad! You're alive! But you died in the crash! Mom remarried decades ago!" "Pedro, my son!" Tears poured freely from Pedro's eyes. "I'm only alive thanks to..." "Hyatt! I recognize those design touches!" Washuu exclaimed, examining multiple holographic screens spread out in mid-air before her. "You were reassembled and re-equipped by my old assistant, Hyatt! She's still alive too!" "Hyatt was your polite assistant? The ancient, self-resurrecting transcendental entity controlling Pedro?" Eclair asked. "She was that cute dark-haired, pale-skinned android of yours?" "The assistant to whom you confided the details of how the counter-agent works?" Lumiere asked weakly. "Yes, that's my Hyatt!" Washuu replied. "Good. Hyatt remembers everything. So now that we know we'll be able to use it, we just have to actually find the counter-agent." "No problem. It's this way," Pedro pointed. "This close, I can sense it." Just over a nearby rise, the party could see a few chunks of red spaceship hull decorating the next hillside over. "Is there anything left?" Yuri asked worriedly. "It's there," Pedro said positively. One red chunk turned out to be a substantial chunk from the center stateroom section. Leading the way, Pedro ducked and squeezed through a crudely-made hole in the side, then stood facing a closet door. Pedro opened it. The closet was completely filled with a silvery, shiny growth, an organic, growing substance whose entire surface consisted of extremely sharp spines. "Yep, that's it! That's the counter-agent," Washuu announced, pleased, holding up a mysterious device to the growth and reading the display. "Great! Okay, now, how do we activate it?" Tenchi asked. "Hold on, hold on, it HAS been a while since I created it, you know..." Pedro cocked his head. "I can do it, if someone else can supply the password," he announced. "I've been... this body has been... wired specifically for this purpose." "Password? Was there a password?" Washuu looked at Tsunami. "You gave it to them," Tsunami replied, indicating Eclair and Lumiere. "I think." "Well, _I_ certainly don't remember it!" Eclair huffed. "I... I remember it," Lumiere roused herself enough to mutter. "Oh, no!" Pedro put his hands to the side of his head in dismay, then stepped up next to the open closet and thrust his hands deep inside the counter-agent, whose sharp needles pierced him through and through. "Aaaarrgh! Hurry! Just say the password aloud!" Lumiere nodded, her brow creased with agony, and carefully pronounced "K'shatriyavlaph!thrillyapyihhyel@priyadya." Tsunami blushed and gave Washuu a displeased look. "I can't believe you used THAT phrase as a password." "So what's it mean?" Ryouko asked in interest. "YOU are hardly in need of a coarser vocabulary," Aeka noted primly. Tsunami blushed harder. "It has to do with... how trees make more trees." "Specifically, how trees a billion years ago went about it," Washuu amended. The Counter-Agent began to glow and pulsate. After thirty seconds, the glow had increased to a point blinding to most observers, then shrunk into a small silver shape, which floated away from Pedro and towards Poemi. Poemi reached up towards the object as it reached her, now resembling a silvery fish skeleton. As she touched it, another flash occurred, and Poemi rose into the air and began to rotate slowly, her clothes dissolving and new ones forming around her. Her hair color changed from orange to pink. Tenchi just shook his head sadly. "Washuu, did you REALLY have to design the process like this?" "Hey, it's a classic theme!" Finally the process stopped. Poemi floated, eyes closed, as her arms rose in front of her and her hands opened, face up. As the glow vanished, her eyes opened. Her face had just time to twist into cold anger before Menchi darted out from cover into her arms. Poemi and Menchi vanished. Far off in intergalactic space, Puni-puni Poemi and Menchi reappeared deep within a cold, apparently-deserted asteroid, face to face with a immense construct, partly electronic, partly biological, mostly neither. A cord appeared next to Poemi, apparently hanging down from the ceiling. She pulled it. All around the central core of Excel, space itself weakened, its most fundamental properties altered. Light leaked through from somewhere else. A hole in space itself appeared, into which Excel's central core, and Menchi, were irresistably sucked. "No! I've failed you, most glorious Il Palazzo! Your faithful Excel regrets this and promises to do better next time! But irregardless of where this hole in space is taking me, at least I have an emergency food supply!" came drifting faintly back through the hole in space. - - - - - - - - - - And back on the Kyoko, Eclair was just finishing explaining their circumstances to the others. "We have no ship now, and, well, GOTT has outlawed us again. So you see..." Lumiere turned to Tsunami and Washuu and gave them a bow, smiling. "Please allow us to accompany you, Mistresses." "Of course you can," Tsunami smiled at the pair. Washuu, on the other hand, turned to glance at Tenchi, snickering as she did so. "More?" Tenchi asked in disbelief. THE END (for now). - - - - - - - - - - This and other fanfics (including parts 1-12) stored at: http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Dojo/5058 Radical Edward is from "Cowboy Bebop"; Alielle from El Hazard; Kei and Yuri are the "Dirty Pair". The 'Transcend' and 'Blight' concepts (Excel plays the Blight here) are from Vernor Vinge's Hugo-winning "A Fire upon the Deep". My plot also bears a vague resemblance to his. Eclair, Lumiere, and the GOTT are from "Kiddy Grade". Please indicate, in any C&C, your prior familiary with the ingredient material, the Vinge novel in particular. I'd like to believe I've made all of this clear even to those who've never read Vernor Vinge, but if I haven't, only your feedback can help. 1 2 3 4 5 6 123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456