TENCHI MUYO:  LIGHTHAWK LEGEND
Book 1:  Destiny's Children
Episode 3:  Malfunction


    The dreams still came to her at night. Ayeka moaned in her sleeping
chamber. Once again, she stood before the devil-faced Sasami in the tree
chamber, being strangled to death by her own sister. She knew that it had
really been some demonic spirit, but the shock remained. It had been three
months, and neither she nor Sasami had shown signs of recovery from the
mental injuries they had sustained, so their mother, Lady Misaki, had gone
against their father's wishes and sent them to Earth with the guardian
robots Azaka and Kamidake, named after the First Knights.
    Earth was a planet beyond the reaches of most of the stress of Jurai's
royal responsibilities, and the Galaxy Police officers Mihoshi and Kiyone
had been assigned to protect them. They would be arriving in approximately
two days.
Ayeka sighed as she gazed out the port window, her long violet hair still in
its sleeping cover. Why Earth of all places? Why not Ryuten, or someplace
where the Jurai royal family would receive the proper respect? They had been
assigned to keep a low profile, had been granted with what was believed to
be a large sum of Earth currency, and their residence had been selected
inside the island Earthlings called Japan. If Ayeka remembered correctly,
the name of the
town in which they would be arriving was Okayama.

<<>>

    Tenchi stretched and yawned as he got out of bed. The morning light was
just barely creeping past his shaded windows, and he could smell breakfast
being cooked downstairs. He quickly put on a green T-shirt and a pair of
jeans, folded his bed, and walked downstairs.
    Yosho wasn't cooking. It was Ryoko!
    She turned and smiled. "Hi, Tenchi!" She was standing on a crutch, and
she had removed her arm cast.
    "Ryoko, are you sure you should be up? I'm sure Grandpa wouldn't mind
cooking for one more day." Tenchi stammered.
    She turned back towards the stove. "No, if I'm ever going to get better,
I have to exercise."
    "But so soon?"
    "It's been two months! Have more faith in my healing ability; after all,
I am a space pirate."
    "That's true. Sure you don't want any help?"
    "No. I'll be fine, but thanks anyway."
    "If you say so."
    As Tenchi walked away, Ryoko had the temptation to cut the counter in
half with her beam saber. She didn't want to lie to Tenchi, but she didn't
want him to worry either. The real reason that she was out of bed was that
she was agitated. Her overly powerful sixth sense told her that danger was
approaching; not necessarily a life-threatening danger, but one that Ryoko
knew from far back in her past. She was trouble all right. Trouble with a
capital "A".

<<>>

    "Princess Ayeka, we have arrived at Planet Earth." the orb-shaped core
announced. They had been traveling aboard Ayeka's ship, the Ryu-Oh.
    "So soon? It should have taken longer, given the reach of our father."
Ayeka mused.
    "Are we there yet?" Sasami inquired.
    "Yes." Ayeka responded. "And at a most unusual time."
    The Ryu-Oh began its descent to Earth, and flames erupted on its bottom.
    "What's going on?!" Ayeka shouted.
    "The planet's atmosphere is more resistant than we had at first
expected. The air appears to be intoxicated with high levels of carbon
monoxide." the computer responded.
    "Pull us back!" Ayeka demanded. "A vacation is no good if we get
poisoned by the very air!"
    "The levels of carbon monoxide are high enough to cause resistance, but
they are not harmful to biological tissue." said the computer. "In fact, the
area we are heading for is almost chemical-free."
    "I don't care." Ayeka cried. "If it contains pollutants, then it is not
fit for a Juraian Princess to breathe! Take us back!"
    "I can't. The atmosphere entry has jammed my thrusters. I am not able to
pull us out, nor control the landing. I can only guarantee that we are
headed for Okayama."

<<>>

    Katsuhito had gotten out of bed early that morning and had consulted the
spirit fire. Ever since Ryoko had escaped from her cave and had come to live
in his son-in-law's house, he had felt a deeper bond with her than if he had
just met her. It was highly unusual, given his old and weathered self, so he
had summoned the Jurai spirits. He had received no answer.
    What could this mean? Even when they did not know, the spirits had
always told him this, so why no answer?
He gazed up into the leaf-ridden fall sky. It had been many months since
Ryoko had come to live with them, and all this time the remnants of his
Jurai power had been warning him of something. Could Ryoko be dangerous?
    Katsuhito laughed at his own question. How ironic that the demonic space
pirate that he fought a life-or-death battle with centuries ago had turned
out to be a bowl of Jello in his grandson's arms. No, Ryoko wasn't what the
spirits were warning against, but she had triggered something that had begun
these . . .
    These . . .
    Katsuhito had lost his train of thought. He shook his head as he always
did when he figured that he had come down with amnesia. Then he looked up
again. What was that meteor that was hurtling down towards the shrine?!

<<>>

    Tenchi was just going out to the fields with Ryo-Ohki when a shadow of
immense proportions blocked the sunlight. He would have been crushed and
burned to death by Ayeka's ship if it had not been for Ryoko. Having no time
to push Tenchi out of the way she rammed herself into the ship head-on.
    As Ryoko's brutal punch hit the nose of the ship, Tenchi saw a
heart-ripping scene. Ryoko had put all of her energy into the punch. She had
seen for a brief second that the only person she cared about in the universe
was about to be destroyed and something hit her. She didn't even have time
to think, but in that second, her mind flew into a trance.

    She was a little girl again, and she was in a solid steel rectangular
room with no furniture at all. Only a few sheets covered her. In her arms,
she held a cabbit. On her last mission of destruction, Ryo-Ohki had become
seriously wounded, and Kagato had reasoned that leaving her to die would be
less expensive than saving her, but little Ryoko would not see her only
friend die.
    She had snuck the cabbit past Kagato and was healing Ryo-Ohki with her
own life force. She coughed a desperate cough that echoed in the dark
chambers of the Soja. She couldn't keep this up forever.
    Then a door appeared out of nowhere and Kagato slammed it open. Ryoko
screamed as Ryo-Ohki flew out of her arms and into Kagato's.
    The aged man squeezed Ryo-Ohki's small neck between his thumb and index
finger. "So, you thought you could hide this from me Ryoko? Now, witness the
death that so easily could have been prevented if you hadn't intervened."
Ryoko's eyes went wide as Kagato continued. "Yes, Ryoko. I wasn't really
going to kill the cabbit; this was a test of your obedience to me."
    Tears of unimaginable grief and frustration welled up in the naked
little girl's eyes as Kagato laughed. "Now your friend pays the price!"
    Ryoko let loose a cry that one hears only once in a lifetime. The sheer
volume made Kagato drop the cabbit like a ticking bomb and cover his ears.
The cry echoed throughout space and time, the sound waves tearing their way
across the cosmos. Kagato had made a mistake. He had pushed the forlorn
Ryoko too far, and had brought her into contact with a power that even the
Jurai goddesses could only dream of. He knew that it existed; it was the
reason for his quest. Others would think he was searching for the feared
Jurai power, or perhaps the power of the gems, but no, he was searching for
something far greater. The only thing he was missing was the key. The key
which he could never possess: love.
    Ryoko's young face contorted into a mask of grief and stifled anger as
she seemed to burn with pure energy. Kagato reared back in fear but it was
too late. Ryoko screamed and dashed through the air with a speed Kagato
couldn't follow.
    Two months later, he woke in a regeneration capsule. He turned to the
maintenance robot and asked "What happened?"
    The robot reported. "You were brought into the ward in dismal shape. It
appears Ryoko managed to dismember and decapitate you into several pieces
before she calmed down and passed out. She is being held in a detention
cell, and we have managed to piece you back together, but we had to use
astro-body materials to reconstruct your limbs."
    Kagato rose. All that didn't matter, but he had learned his lesson. He
would never dare push Ryoko that far again if he wasn't controlling the
gems.

    It was this same power that sprang up again in Ryoko. Her punch split
the ship from tip to stern and shattered the glass core. As the stunned
Tenchi was swept out of the way by his grandfather, he thought he saw a ball
of light shoot out of the wrecked ship as soon as Ryoko collided with its
hull.
    Energy waves flew from both Ryoko and the Ryu-Oh. The bolts tore up the
ground as Ryoko strained against the ship. Chunks of rock began to float
rather than fly and a crater started to form underneath the woman and the
machine, defining the area of Ryoko's energy sphere.
    The ship had broken in half but had failed to hit the solid earth. Ryoko
hovered ten feet above, wielding a ship half in each hand. With a mighty
yell she hurled the smashed spacecraft into the lake and fell earthward. The
energy faded, and the space pirate's newly pummeled body landed softly in
Tenchi's waiting arms.
    Tears welled in his kind eyes as he looked at the girl who had almost
sacrificed herself to save him.
    "Why?" Tenchi choked. "Why for me?"

<<>>

    "Well now, isn't this wonderful?" Ayeka complained.
    She, her sister Sasami, and the guardian robots had materialized
somewhere in the woods behind the Masaki Shrine.
    "Our ship has crashed on a desolate planet in the middle of nowhere, we
get teleported into a barbaric forest, and we didn't even manage to save my
wardrobe!"
    Sasami sighed with the guardian robots. "Sis, can't you be glad that we'
re all okay? Besides, this planet isn't that bad." She took a moment to look
around herself as Ayeka refused to be consoled. "Actually, its really
pretty! Look at the trees, Ayeka!"
    Ayeka saw the trees of the fall, with their various crimson, orange, and
golden leaves. A light breeze whooshed by, playing with she and her sister's
long ponytails and causing more leaves to fall. They danced in the air and
swirled around the group, as if attempting to remind them of something long
forgotten.
    Sasami smiled. "There aren't any trees like this on Jurai."
    Ayeka was lost in thought. 'I know this.'
    The trance was broken by a shout from a boy running through the woods.
"Hey, you there!"
    "Oh no!" Ayeka gasped. "It's one of the natives! Quick, run, Sasami!"
    As the mysterious girls and the pair of logs dashed off deeper into the
woods, Tenchi was running out of breath. Sure, practice kept him fit, but it
didn't account for chasing aliens through the forest at 9:00 in the morning,
did it?
Then Tenchi heard a scream. He rushed headlong into the deep woods, Master
Key in hand. Both girls, in their blind dash, had happened upon a bear. It
was of a normal sort and normally docile, but having been woken from sleep
by a pair of screaming women and their bumbling guardians, who couldn't seem
to say anything but "Here we come, here we come, here we come . . ." isn't
the most pleasant of experiences.
    Ayeka and Sasami were now trapped in-between the "savage native" and a
roaring beast. "What do we do?" Sasami whimpered.
    Tenchi analyzed the situation quickly. By their look, these two had to
be the pilots of that ship, and questioning home-wreckers who had been
mangled by a bear wouldn't be the best way to go about things, so . . .
    It was hard to tell who was more amazed when Tenchi activated the Master
Key, the girls or the bear. The animal, upon sensing the huge chi vibration
fled in fear.
    As Tenchi sheathed the sword, Ayeka stood shell-shocked. Sasami clapped
and cheered. "Wow, you're great! Who are you, huh? Where'd you get that
sword? Are you from Jurai?"
    Ayeka stopped the flurry of questions as Tenchi stood with a sweatdrop
forming over his head. "Hush, Sasami. We shouldn't interfere with local-"
    "Jurai?" Tenchi interrupted. "Grandpa mentioned that place. Say, are you
two from Jurai?"
    Ayeka gave Tenchi a good look for the first time.
    Sasami smiled. "Of course we did. Where do you think we-"
    The interruptions continued as Ayeka stuttered. "Y-Y-Yosho?"
    "Huh? No, I'm Tenchi Masaki."
    "And I'm Princess Sasami! Nice to meet you, Tenchi! This is my sister
Ayeka, and those are our guardians, Azaka and Kamidake!"
    Ayeka was confused. This boy; he had Yosho's kind face, but his hair was
unnaturally short, and his garb was also strange. Even his voice sounded
like her half-brother Yosho's!
    Tenchi smiled at the happy little girl and her befuddled sister. So at
last, he had the chance to meet someone from that place that Grandpa called
Jurai. He had come here to confront the ones responsible for Ryoko's injury,
but these two didn't seem to have any ill will.
    Ayeka decided that since he possessed the Master Key, it would be safe
to trust him. "Mr. Masaki,"
    Tenchi blushed. "Don't call me that, it makes me sound like my dad. Just
call me Tenchi."
    "All right, Tenchi," she continued. "I don't mean to be impetuous, but
our ship has crash-landed, and we need a place to wait for rescue. Could I
trouble you to-"
    Tenchi's face grew serious. "Actually, you gravely injured somebody when
your ship crashed in front of my grandfather's shrine."
    Ayeka gasped. "Oh my! Oh, if there's anything I can do . . ."
    Tenchi continued. "Grandpa said that only someone with Jurai energy
could heal her, and that I didn't know enough about it to help."
    Ayeka smiled. It made sense. Since he had been able to activate the
Tenchi sword (strange that he had the same name as the blade), he must be
from Jurai, but he must also be of the Royal Family. She knew no one of that
name in her family, but Yosho had left with that sword. Those eyes, that
voice . . . He must be Yosho's grandson!
    She nodded. "I would be happy to assist your friend."
    Sasami grinned from ear to ear. "I'll come too!"
    The logs spoke in their automated voices. "Here we go."

<<>>

    Ayeka knew it. The man standing in front of the shrine had to be Yosho.
The hair alone gave him away. The group had arrived back at the shrine.
    "Yosho?" Ayeka inquired.
    "It's me, Ayeka." he responded. He didn't sound too happy.
    "Where have you been all this time, Yosho?!" she asked. "We were so
worried about you back home! I even went on a journey in search of you, but
we never managed to find you until-"
    "That will have to wait, Ayeka." Yosho calmly stated. "Inside is the
Jurai healing tank that used to be on my ship, but it cannot operate without
Jurai energy. My power is gone, but I believe you know the procedure."
    Ayeka provided her customary nod. "Yes, Yosho. Anything to help a friend
of your grandson."
    Yosho raised an eybrow. "Good."
    As the logs waited outside and Yosho/Katsuhito/Grandpa, Ayeka, and
Sasami headed inside, Tenchi was left outside utterly confused. Had he
missed something?
    Ayeka stormed out a few seconds later. She called back to the shrine
"There is no way in hell that I'd help that she-devil!!"
    As she marched off to the lake, logs in tow, the others were left with
sweatdrops. Yosho turned to Sasami. "Sasami, would you mind?"
    "Not at all!" she chirped and went back inside.
    Yosho smiled at his discombobulated grandson. "Same old Ayeka."

<<>>

    As more time passed while Ryoko healed in the fluid tank, Yosho
explained his past to Tenchi, how he had been a prince on Jurai and had
chased Ryoko to Earth for attacking the palace, and how Tenchi had inherited
his Jurai power and was now destined to become Crown Prince.
    Ayeka began to become fond of Yosho's grandson, and Sasami found a
"cyuuuuuute" friend in the energetic Ryo-Ohki. They became welcome house
guests, but they all thought of the lonely girl in the healing tank, and
awaited her awakening; some with anxiety, others with anticipation.
    The prelude was almost over, and Act One was about to begin . . .

Disclaimer:
     This is a work of fan fiction and uses characters and situations from
the Tenchi Muyo TV series, copyrighted under Pioneer.  Also, some characters
may come from the No Need For Tenchi graphic novel series, copyright Viz
Comics.  I take no credit for the base characters and plot, but all
developments as of the time frame of my story are of my own design.  If by
some strange chance my plot is parallel to another author's fanfiction, I
wish to be notified.  For comments and information, E-mail me at
bkvhw@earthlink.net

    By the way, if I send replies, and my name is listed as Barbara Wylie,
ignore that.  My name is Steven, but my E-mail keeps doing that anyway.