Hey there, welcome back!  This is the eleventh episode of Bushido Muyo!
I hope that you have enjoyed it thus far and that there is indeed someone 
still
reading my work.  If there is, thank you for your patience, and I'll try to
make it worth the wait.
	Oh, and by the way, Tenchi Muyo! and the related characters are the
property of Pioneer LDC and AIC.  I don't own the characters I write about.  
I
have created the situation that they stand in here in the hope that my peers
may be entertained, as well as to find if I understand these fictional 
people
and their unique motivations as thoroughly as I would beleive I do.  Some of
the villans are indeed of my own design, but my creativity in casting ends
there.  So don't sue me, okay?

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

				   Bushido Muyo!
			     by Jeremy "Kraken" Acord
			       azhrei701@hotmail.com

		Episode 11: "Pinacle"

	Sasami awoke just as the sky outside her window was beginning to
brighten.  She stirred, and eventually her eyes opened.  She sat up and 
yawned,
stretching. For a few moments, the princess stared out the window of the 
room
she shared with her sister, who still slept beside her on the floor.  Sasami
got up quietly.  She looked down at the new pajamas that Washu had made for
her.  The scientist had also offered to make a larger version of the dress 
she
had been fond of wearing, the one that was destroyed in the assimilation, 
but
such clothes only reminded the girl of a painful past.  She had declined.
	Also, Ryoko had given her a box of "tampons," saying she would explain
later.
	Sasami dressed in another of Aeka's kimonos and left the room.  She
padded softly down the hallway, as she had often see Ryoko do, and was
approaching Tenchi's room when there was a clang of metal from below.  
Sasami
quickened her stride and hurried downstairs, where she found Nobiyuki, 
sitting
dejectedly on the kitchen floor with a pot over his head and another in his
lap.  Above him, the cabinet doors were still swinging.  Tenchi's father 
tilted
the great metal helmet back on his head so as to see Sasami.  "Oh," he
commented gloomily, "I was hoping I wouldn't wake anyone up."  He sighed.
	Sasami giggled.  She made a futile attempt to hide it, and bent to help
Nobiyuki up.  She set the small pot on the man's lap aside, and gave him a 
hand
up.  Nobiyuki doffed the second vessel and walked over to the sink.  He ran
some water into it and opened another cabinet above, fishing for some dish
soap.  He found some, in a nearly empty bottle, which had several notes
attached to it, all reading "get more dish soap."
	Tenchi appeared in the doorway.  The boy yawned, scratching his head.
"Hi dad, hi Sasami," he said, "So, dad, are you helping with the cooking 
this
mor-OOF!"
	The young Masaki boy was thrown a few feet into the kitchen from being
flanked and soundly clobbered by a body blow from Ryoko.  Tenchi skidded to 
a
halt on his back, with the space pirate atop him.  "Good morning, Tenchi,"
Ryoko said, smiling.
	Ryoko moved back when Tenchi began to sit up.  He rubbed the back of
his head. "Ugh.  Good morning, Ryoko," he replied.
	"That was pathetic," Ryoko observed, now nose-to-nose with him again.
"How 'bout a morning kiss for your sweetheart?"
	Tenchi caught a fleeting look of surprise on Ryoko's face as she was
shoved bodily aside by a hard kick from Aeka.  She turned her nose up
disdainfully at the sprawling space pirate.  Then, looking down at Tenchi,
asked, "Are you all right, Lord Tenchi?"  Her eyes followed him as he 
climbed
to his feet.
Tenchi dusted himself off.  "Yes, Aeka, I'm fine, thank you," he answered.
Aeka and Ryoko glared at each other as Tenchi walked into the kitchen.  
Tenchi
offered Sasami and his father his help, and the two gladly accepted.  Washu
soon arrived, with Kiyone close behind.  She had donned her galaxy police
uniform a sign that, should she manage to wake her partner, they would soon 
be
on patrol.
	Once breakfast had been prepared, the gang discarded the usual ritual
of eating at the table and ate at various places around the kitchen.  But
during the meal there was one moment for Tenchi in which all seemed almost 
to
stop.  Though nearly everyone was talking, Ryo-Oki was meowing, and Aeka and
Ryoko bickering, it was eerily silent to the boy.  Moments later events
accelerated back to their customary speed and volume.  Across the room,
Ryo-Oki meowed frantically, pawing at Sasami's sleeve.  Sasami, who had been
staring off into space, blinked a few times and looked down.  "Oh, Ryo-Oki,"
She said dreamily, "You haven't had your breakfast yet, have you."  As she 
left
to gets some carrots for the hungry cabbit, she shot a troubled look at 
Tenchi.
Tenchi was troubled by this, but a glance at the clock told him that he 
should
get ready for school.  He still had to finish his homework, and it would 
take
some hunting to find clothes that would sufficiently conceal the gems.  He
quietly excused himself.

					***

	The cool wind of the coming winter was at Tenchi's back as he walked
home beneath the darkening sky.  Invisible fingers of cold air played across
his cheeks, sometimes causing Tenchi to shiver.  As he strode idly down the
familiar path, he considered the strange look of worry in Sasami's eyes that
morning.  A feeling of dread had followed him throughout his day at school, 
a
persistant melancholy sentiment which had permeated the whole of his being.  
He
had been anxious to get home, even though it meant continual harrasment by 
at
least four of the six women who lived with him.  He reached the gate, but 
Azaka
and Kamidake were not at their usual posts.  The gate was somewhat ajar.
Tenchi took one step inside and gasped.
	The dock had a blast hole in it at least three feet wide, with only a
sliver of wood left between the land and the last two pylons.  The lawn was
pocked with craters of varying sizes, slabs of the bridge were overturned,
crumbled or missing.  He sighted one of the two Jurai gaurdians to the left 
of
the bridge, half in the water.  The wooden casing of the gaurdian was
blackened, making it unidentifiable.  Standing at an angle and most likely
half buried in the silt, one of the slats that normally concealed the more
awsome weaponry at the gaurdian's disposal stood open, battered and ragged-
edged.
	Tenchi dropped his bag at the gate, crossed the bridge at a dead run
and leapt into the water beside the fallen robot.  He slapped the charred
wooden pillar with his hand.  "Hey!  Hey, wake up!" he yelled.
	"L-," Azaka's comically gruff synthesis of human speech stuttered, "L-
Lord Tenchi."
	"Azaka?  Are you all right?"
	"I beleive that... will be -ine."
	"Azaka, what HAPPENED here?"
	"Grand..father woundeddd.  Help h-h-h-im," Azaka's mammoth body tilted
back, a crude but unmistakeable indication of the house.  Tenchi was up and
running before he was even aware of his actions.  He hurtled toward the
shattered glass of the living room windows, and leapt in over the shards
still affixed to the frame.  His feet crunched over the debris.  Scanning 
the
darkened space, he sighted Kamidake.  The second Jurai guardian had been
embedded in the wall between the living room and the front hallway.  
Shattered
dry wall and splintered boards of wood framed the pocked and scarred bulk of
the robot.  Tenchi ran to its side.
	"Kamidake!  Kamidake, can you hear me?" he called.
	A deep groan emanated as the body of the guardian began to shift
forward.  The red eye flashed sporadically, but Tenchi could hear no voice
from the stricken warrior.  He patted Kamidake reassuringly, and the 
blinking
ceased.  He turned to the rest of the living room.  The couch had been torn 
in
half at the joint, the table upturned, and a good portion of the stairs
vaporized.  Some of the banister on the balcony above and the struts
supporting it were smashed inward.Tenchi searched the room for Katsuhito.  
He
pulled back a section of the couch, pushed the table aside, and found his
grandfather, lying beside the door to Washu's lab.  His priests' garb was
tattered and burnt, his spectacles tilted and bent-rimmed, and in a few 
places
blood stained the rugged cloth.  A red patch spread from Katsuhito's 
shoulder,
and the man's right hand, clutching Tenchi-Ken, pressed down on it, 
supressing
the bleeding.
	"Grandpa!  Grandpa!  Wake up, grandpa!" Tenchi yelled, shaking him.
	Slowly, the priest's eyes slowly opened.  "Ah, Tenchi, you're finally
here," he croaked.
	"Grandpa, what happened here?" He asked.
	"A man came while Sasami was cooking dinner, he had tremendous power.
He got Ryoko first, and captured Sasami and Aeka next.  I tried to help, but
Tenchi-ken does not belong to me now.  He defeated me easily, and told me to
relay you a message," he lifted his head from the floor.  "He said 'I regret
that I cannot face you in person, Tenchi, as I had hoped, but my employer
thought it too risky.  It saddens me to know that you will never have the
opportunity to help these women.'  He's right, Tenchi.  He and the girls are
long gone.  Mihoshi and Kiyone couldn't fire their guns with the others in
custody, and they surrendered.  I haven't seen Ryo-Oki scince this morning."
	Footsteps sounded outside, and soon Nobiyuki flung the door aside and
ran to join Tenchi and Katsuhito.  "I'll be fine, grandson," Katsuhito
admonished Tenchi, "go see to Azaka.  He took a blast full on, and I fear he
may not survive."  Tenchi tried to tell him otherwise, but his grandfather 
had
lapsed back into unconsciousness.
	Tenchi helped Nobiyuki pry Azaka from the lakebed.  Azaka regained the
air, and though he seemed to be having problems balancing, assured them that
he would be all right.  Afterward, Tenchi looked into the sky.  A bright 
star,
quickly retreating, hung high overhead.  Tenchi stared at it for a long 
while.
"Coward," he murmured.  "Were you too afraid to FACE ME?!" he screamed at 
the
heavens.  He clenched his fists, and the gems began to burn in his flesh.
They fueled his anger, inflicting ever more pain.  "Why don't you deal with
ME!?!" He cried.
	Suddenly, the Light Hawk Wings exploded into being around him.  They
rotated around the hub of his body, oscillating up and down, humming loudly.
Tenchi's eyebrows narrowed, his facial features grew sharper.  "Azaka, I 
order
you, as a descendant of the Jurai Royal Family, to stay HERE.  You will help
care for the wounded.  Borrow Washu's equipment if you have to.  I'm sure
she'll accept our apology... once I bring them back."
	Azaka nearly fell over again and Nobiyuki staggered backward as they
were hit by the shock wave and ear-popping boom from Tenchi's sudden
departure.  A few thousand feet up, a thick white contrail led straight up
into the upper atmosphere.  A bright light emanated from the end of the 
trail,
becoming dimmer as Tenchi entered the vacuum of space.
	Near Neptune, a truly immense ship was slowly moving toward deep space.
Massive artillery batteries bristled all along the oblong body of the 
vessel.
Two mammoth engines burned with pale blue fire as the ship moved 
deliberately
out of the solar system, to avoid the sheer mass of the vehicle tearing the
structure apart under the normally negligible gravity of the sun.  In mass, 
It
was roughly equivalent to one sixteenth earth's moon, and it required 
massive
amounts of energy even to operate.
	Atop a ponderous bulge sitting between the two giant funnels of the
engines, a small dome sat, blinking with lights.  It's smooth skin was 
ringed
by further gun emplacements, like the proverbial lily amidst thorns.  Inside
this dome, a three story command deck was located.  three elevator shafts
serviced the traffic from the three sub-bridges to and from the rest of the
ship, which was largely devoted to power generation and management.  In the
still quite ample space left over, huge living quarters stretched the lengh
and breadth of the ship, all the way along the ridged seams that forked 
toward
the bow.  On the uppermost command bridge, a ring of consoles sat below
gigantic screen.  Standing on a raised portion of flooring was a middle-aged
man with shaggy hair of a dark azure hue.  His sharp green eyes unhurriedly
scanned the work of the ship's eleven pilots and navigation officers.

	"Commander Ijima!" a nav officer to the man's right called, "Massive
energy source dectected astern, sir!  Currently at thirty-three thousand 
miles
and closing rapidly!"
	Ijima hopped down from his lofted perch and jogged to the officer's
console.  "Thirty-thousand miles?  How could anything get that close without
being detected?  You should have spotted it at fifty thousand miles."
	"I did, sir, but It's moving extremely fast.  It origionated from the
Earth, about one minute ago."  Alarms began to whine, but Ijima was unfazed,
staring thoughtfully at the screen.
	"Well, well, just as I hoped," he mused, "It seems we've made our
friend angry."  He turned to the rest of the bridge.  "I want that 
approaching
ship fired upon!  All available guns!" he commanded loudly.
	It took a total of thirty seconds for all batteries that could be
trained on the advancing threat to be so.  "Fire!" Ijima immediately 
mandated.
	There was a resounding boom and a rough shock as all on board
artillery simultaneously discharged.  A moment of silence followed.  As the
interference from the huge explosion faded, one of the radar officers spoke
up.  "No object detected.  Target destroyed."
	"Flight Officer Gada!" Ijima called.
	"Sir!"
	"You have command.  I must speak with my employer about this
developement."  As he strode toward the elevator, he smiled, almost in
sympathy, at the Flight Officer.  Gada soon dismissed it and ordered slow
ahead, out of the Solar System.

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

	Well, so much for Tenchi, I guess.  Just kidding!  I haven't found an
ending worthy of Bushido Muyo! yet.  I may never end it.  So, hang tough and
the next episode will be here before you know it!
-Kraken
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