Tenchi Muyou:
Union

    The day was almost upon her, and as Sasami stood at the kitchen window
and watched the sun set on the last day of her independence, she felt a
terrible pang in her heart.

    At midnight, she would be eighteen years old.

    At the next midnight after that, Tsunami would come to her, and they
would become one.

    Yet Sasami was reconciled to this, and indeed the idea filled her not
with fear but with a sense of longing. 'Twas a consumation devoutly to be
wished. The pain she felt came not from what would happen, but what could
not ever happen afterwards. She would never again be alone with one she
loved. Tsunami would always be there with them. And that gave her cause to
grieve.

    But from grief, she passed soon to resolution. Taking a deep breath, she
picked up the dinner she'd cooked, and took it out to the dining room where
the others were waiting.

    Ryouko and Ayeka were once again sniping at each other about some petty
issue, while Mihoshi regaled a bored-looking Washuu with some wild tale,
much to Kiyone's annoyance. Ryo-oh-ki was staring tearfully at her empty
supper dish. Of those resident at the Masaki home, only Grandfather Youshou,
Father Nobuyuki and Tenchi himself were nowhere to be seen.

    The absence of the former two surprised her not, for Nobuyuki had been
called into the city on some desperate business for a client, while Youshou
was spending the night at the shrine on some sort of important vigil.

    Tenchi, on the other hand ... "Where's Tenchi-niichan?" Sasami asked as
she set the meal down on the table.

    Kiyone looked up. "Apparently, there's something wrong with the carrots,
and he had to go and check them out."

    Sasami sighed as she set down Ryo-chan's dinner, much to the cabbit's
joy. Tenchi's absence both irritated and relieved her. She hadn't been sure
if she would be able to say what she wanted to say if he were there, but his
absence meant that she'd wasted a good worry.

    She took her seat at the table, and held back until everyone began to
say "Itte-" before interrupting with a single cry of "Wait!"

    "What's the matter, Sasami?" Ayeka asked, startled.

    "We're hungry!" Ryouko protested. "Let's eat, and then we can discuss
whatever it is."

    "This won't wait, Ryouko-neechan," Sasami replied, turning on the tears
just a little bit. "It's really important."

    Ryouko subsided, looking irritated but not really angry.

    "As you all know," Sasami began. "Tomorrow is my eighteenth birthday.
Tomorrow night, Tsunami and I will become one."

    There was a faint gasp from everyone present. They'd all been expecting
this for a while now, but to have it stated so bluntly came as a bit of a
shock.

    "Sasami," Ayeka began in her quiet, serious tone. "I know that you are
probably a bit scared of what will happen when you become one with Tsunami,
but I want you to know one thing. No matter what happens, or what you
become, you will always be my little sister, and I will always love you."

    Sasami smiled brightly. "Thank you very much, oneesan," she replied.
"But ... I will be a bit different, after tomorrow."

    "Howcum?" Ryouko replied, staring hungrily at the quickly cooling meal.
"You already look just like her, y'know. How'll you be so different?"

    She weighed a few possible ways to tell her the answer to that, then
decided to return bluntness for bluntness. "Well, just for starters, I won't
be a virgin anymore."

    Dead silence.

    "I'm sorry," Kiyone began in the same quiet, measured, reasoned tone
that she used at the very start of some of her conversations with Mihoshi.
"I could have sworn you just said that after you join with Tsunami, you
won't be a virgin anymore. Now, why would merging your consciousness with
Tsunami's cause that to change?"

    "Because I'm not going to just merge my consciousness with Tsunami's
consciousness," Sasami replied. "I've known for a while now that this would
be a true union, of mind and soul ... and body."

    More dead silence.

    "You mean, in order to join with Tsunami ..." Ayeka began.

    "... you and she are going to have sex with each other?" Ryouko
finished, looking by turns fascinated and appalled. Mostly appalled.

    "Yes. But before that happens..." Sasami said, then paused for a moment,
before dramatically continuing. "I want to have sex with all of you."

    Again, dead silence. Then tumult.

    After a short period of confused shouting, Ryouko's voice finally
managed to dominate. "What the *hell* brought this on?"

    Sasami waited for the noise to die down a bit before replying. "I just
recently realized that after I become one with Tsunami, I will never be
alone again. I'll never be able to have sex with someone without realizing
that there's someone or something else watching else watching both of us.
And I don't want to lose that experience, so this is my last chance.

    "Well, great, but why us?" Kiyone snapped.

    "Because I love you all."

    "Sasami!" Ayeka snapped. "By now you ought to know that loving someone
does not always mean that you desire them sexually. For example, you may
love me, but in my case it is a sisterly love rather than desire for
intimate --"

    "But it is, oneesan."

    Ayeka stopped in mid-rant. "What?" she asked weakly.

    Sasami clutched her hands in front of her breasts. "Oh yes! I've always
thought you were so *sexy*!" Almost as sexy as Ryouko-neechan, she carefully
did not think. "Sometimes I couldn't get to sleep because you were so close
to me!"

    "You have?" Ayeka asked. "I mean you couldn't? I mean I was? What?" she
concluded, still weakly.

    "Sasami-chan," Washuu raised her voice for the first time that evening.
"Has it occurred to you that while you may want to have sex with each of us,
some of us may not want to have sex with you?"

    Sasami nodded sadly. "And that will hurt me, a little, but I won't force
anyone to do anything that they don't want to do. But I really do want to
show you how much I feel for all of you before everything changes."

    "Okay, I'll be happy to," Mihoshi cheerfully objected. Except that
wasn't an objection, now was it?

    "Mihoshi!" Kiyone gasped.

    "Well, since she wants to, and she's legal now, it's no more wrong than
the two of us having sex, and you like it when we do that, don't you,
Kiyone?" Mihoshi asked, her eyes wide and guileless.

    Kiyone's eyes got wide as well, with shock and fury. "I told you a
thousand times never to tell anyone about that!"

    "Huh," Ryouko said, still looking mildly shocked, but calming down. "I
didn't know you two fooled around, Kiyone. I thought you liked
barely-pubescent boys."

    "I *do*!" Kiyone snapped in reply. "But ... I ..." She slowly trailed
off as she realized what she'd just admitted as everyone stopped staring at
Mihoshi and started staring at her.

    Sasami coughed delicately. "*Anyway*! After I make breakfast tomorrow,
I'm going to the bath-house. I will wait patiently, and I am willing to be
with any of you in any order. But at midnight ... Tsunami comes. Hopefully
quite a few times, if I've learned a bit in the meanwhile, but that's up to
you now isn't it?"

    She stood up, and started to walk out of the room.

    Suddenly, Ryouko and Ayeka spoke in a single voice. "Hey, wait a minute!
What about Tenchi?"

    Sasami paused as her face turned panicky for a moment, then smoothed
over as she turned to look back at them. "Well, I love Tenchi-niichan too,
but since he's not here and I don't really want to go through this again, I
guess I won't have sex with him unless in some utterly unlikely turn of
events he stumbles into the bathhouse tomorrow before it's too late," she
said in a rush, then breathed deeply for a few moments as she started
planning a way to get a note to him inviting him to come see her.

    The usual duo looked suspicious, but said nothing as Sasami made her
escape. Eventually, they turned that suspicious look on each other, and
finally the others.

    "I do hope you were joking when you agreed to this plan, Mihoshi," Ayeka
said slowly.

    "Well, no, I urk," Mihoshi thoughtfully replied as Ayeka's hands closed
around her throat.

    "You will *not* have sex with my little sister! Am I understood? *Not*!
I do not care if the law says that she's old enough to make up her own mind,
she's not old enough to have sex until after *I* start having sex!"

    "You know, you could kill two birds with one stone this way," Ryouko
opined as Kiyone pulled the frothing princess off her partner.

    "Shut *up*."

    "What about you, Washuu?" Ryouko asked her mother, who hadn't said a
word since she raised her one objection, but was looking strangely
contemplative. "You're not going to do something like that, are you?"

    Washuu grinned. "That is a secret, as your father always used to say to
say to me when I asked him if it'd been good for him."

    Still more dead silence. Then more tumult, before Washuu finally
convinced Ryouko that she'd been making a joke.

                          *     *     *

    Night fell. It has a tendency to do so.

    Ryouko couldn't sleep. Instead, she silently teleported through the
household, without any real destination in mind. Yet she could not really
claim to be surprised by the fact that she wound up in the bathhouse.

    Nor was she much surprised when Ayeka arrived a few moments later,
walking. "You can't sleep either, I take it?"

    "Nope," Ryouko replied, dipping a toe in the water. She sighed. "Where
the hell did this *come* from? I mean, don't you people have a normal set of
values about this kind of thing?"

    Ayeka shrugged, though her face looked worried. "What's normal? If you
mean the incestuous feelings that she confessed to me ... well, you should
remember that I did fully intend to marry my half-brother, and no one
objected. Our father was even in favor of the idea.

    "Jurai's highly advanced genetic technology can ensure that the
potentially crippling birth defects which might arise from the mating of
close kin *don't* arise. While sexual congress between parent and an
immature child is strongly frowned upon -- because it is difficult to prove
consensuality -- I have heard a few stories about grown children making the
choice to take a parent as a lover. Similar relationships between siblings
aren't uncommon, even between `full' siblings.

    "Basically, as long as it's consensual, anything goes," Ayeka concluded.
"Now, if you meant the homosexual element -- I haven't the faintest idea.
While my mother has been pillowfriends with Mother Funaho longer than I've
been alive, it's not common knowledge. I only found out under rather
distressing circumstances, and it is *never* discussed in the Palace. Ever.
As far as I knew that she knows, none of her friends or family are
homosexually or bisexually inclined."

    "So in other words, she doesn't know about the two of us, then."

    "Of course not!" Ayeka snapped. "*I* have never revealed the shame of
our first meeting to anyone.

    "There I was, alone and friendless as my car drove through the streets
of some alien world. I was naive and innocent then. How was I to know that
the girl on the streets, asking if I wanted to be shown a good time, would
do *filthy* things to me in exchange for --"

    "You're full of it!" Ryouko sneered. "That's not what happened!

    "There was I, alone, *poor* and friendless on the streets of some alien
world. I was naive and innocent then. How was I to know that the girl in the
big car, offering me that money that I so desperately needed, would want to
make me do *filthy* things for --"

    "You liar!"

    "Weasel!"

    "Hypocrite!"

    "Bitch!"

    "Slut!"

    "Are you as turned on as I am?" Ryouko finally snarled.

    "More!" Ayeka snapped, and they lunged at each other and began fumbling
towards ecstasy.

                       *       *       *

    Kiyone couldn't sleep. It was probably just as well, since Mihoshi
couldn't sleep either, and so what she was doing would have just woken
Kiyone up anyway.

    "I don't know about this," Kiyone muttered. "It just seems ... wrong."

    "Mmm?" Mihoshi asked, her mouth full.

    "I don't *know* what seems wrong about it! I mean, she's cute. Really
cute. Really, really cute. Really -- but I don't like girls that way!"

    "Mmm," Mihoshi replied, sounding disbelieving.

    "I don't! I wouldn't do it with you if I wasn't sure you'd whine and cry
if I didn't!"

    "Mmm!"

    "Would you stop eating spaghetti and talk to me like a regular person!"
Kiyone finally snapped.

    "But I'm hungry!" whined Mihoshi as she swallowed the noodles and turned
off the television. "And I'm need to have lots of energy for when I have sex
with Sasami-chan tomorrow!"

    "You're still bent on doing it, aren't you?" Kiyone asked disgustedly.
"Even though Ayeka made it clear that it's worth your life to --"

    "Well yeah! I mean, what's my life to Sasami-chan's happiness?" Before
Kiyone could parse an answer to that question, Mihoshi continued. "And
besides, you want to do it too."

    Kiyone sat straight up in bed. "What are you talking about? What makes
you think I want --"

    "The really wrinkled copy of Empress Misaki's `Playbeing' centerfold
that I found in your apartment. You probably had a teenage crush on her, and
since her daughter looks just a lot like her --"

    "How do you *know* these things?" Kiyone finally screamed after staring
in disbelief for several moments while Mihoshi explained.

    "I know everything about you, Kiyone. I love you." That said, Mihoshi
turned back to eating.

    Kiyone stared at her a few seconds more before collapsing back to her
bed. "If the Galaxy Police find out about this, my career will be over just
as surely as if *I'd* posed for `Playbeing'."

    "Mmm."

    "So why am I gonna do it anyway?"

                       *       *       *

    Washuu couldn't sleep. Of course, she didn't need to sleep. So instead
she set up a small nanofactory dedicated to producing sex-toys for the orgy
she'd choreographed in her mind, and watched and cackled as they piled up.

    After all, she was the greatest genius in the galaxy, and the Universal
Kama Sutra was merely the introduction to *her* sexual experience ...

                       *       *       *

    Sasami couldn't sleep. She was horny. So she did what any horny teenage
girl, alone in her room at night, does.

    Her hand stilled as she heard the door to the bedroom shift open, and
her heart skipped a beat as she wondered if her older sister had come back
from wherever her nights wanderings had taken her; if she would discover
that her not-so-innocent-as-all-that sister was petting the kitten; if that
would finally make the lustful demon that slept in Ayeka's soul break free
...

    Ooh, yum-yum thought.

    Slowly, Sasami turned to look in the direction of the door.

    "Mya," whispered Ryo-oh-ki.

    Sasami flushed, and sat up. "What's the matter, Ryo-chan?"

    Instead of replying verbally, the cabbit closed her eyes and seemed to
squat in on herself, trembling violently from the edges of her long whiskers
to the end of her tail.

    For a brief moment, Sasami wondered if Ryo-oh-ki might be trying to
indicate that she had some sort of cabbit constipation, and then with a
popping sound, the cabbit transformed.

    Not into the vast and terrible space-ship, nor into the little girl form
that she used from time to time, but into the adult form that she had worn
only once. The one that looked like a slightly duskier version of Ryouko.

    Need it be said that she was quite naked?

    "Ryo-chan!" Sasami gasped. "I thought you couldn't do that without
help!"

    "Mya," the punny-girl explained. (Punny=pussy+bunny, the diminutive of
cabbit=cat+rabbit.)

    "It's hard, and you can only keep it up for a little while? And you
don't know if you could do it if there was more than one person present?"

    "Mya!" came the confirmation.

    "So you don't think that you'd be able to go to the bathhouse with me
tomorrow, since you think everyone else will be there too?" Sasami
continued, beginning to tear up.

    Two great tears dripped down from Ryo-oh-ki's eyes.

    "But ... but you like me so much that you want ... oh, Ryo-chan!" she
said. Indeed, for the next hour or so, that was all that she said, although
she varied it from time to time, so that, for a given five minute period,
she might be saying, "Oh! Oh! Ryo-chan! Oh, Ryo-chan! Oh! Oh, Ryo-chan!
Ryo-chan! Oh! Oh! Ohhhh! Ryo-chan! Ooooooooooooh,
Ryooooooooooo-chaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!"

                          *       *       *

    Tenchi slept. He'd had a long day.

    If he'd known that tomorrow would be even worse, he wouldn't have slept
more soundly. He'd have left the country.

To Be Continued ...

Chris Davies, Advocate for Darkness, Part Time Champion of Light
Fanfics: http://www.fortunecity.com/tattooine/banks/277/
Fanfic Revolution: http://come.to/hauthor
"I love you too. Why the hell else do you think I keep doing
this?" -- Warren Ellis.