Outsiders, chapter 1: the crash a fanfic by Whitestar this is the first fic in a series I have planned. Try to be patient, it may take a while for me to finish each one. Ill try not to have the series go the way of Mirai Muyo (vaporfic). Here's the disclaimer: I don't own Tenchi Muyo or any of the characters in it. In short, please dont sue me. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- She wasnt quite sure this was necessary. The universe's greatest scientific genius shouldn't have to sort through all the data on a suspicious neutron star just to figure out when it would reach critical mass. She toyed with the idea of creating an algorithim to do just that. As she was contemplating creating yet another subdivision of the "suspicious astrological phenomona" processing unit, something in the corner of her screen caught her attention. "How'd that thing get to 7/10 light?" Upon closer inspection, she realized "that thing" was composed of hyperdense pentanium and was generating a self-perpetuating anti-graviton field. She almost fell out of the chair. After a few quick calculations, she realized something even more interesting about the object "Looks like we'll be having another visitor here.", a grin spread across her 12-sai face, "I'd better go rally the troops, there's about... 73 seconds to crashdown" She quickly keyed in a continuous scan cycle, grabbed her loudspeaker, and headed out into realspace. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tenchi began to drift off slowly. The radio played softly as he tryed in vain to keep his mind on the 15th electron probability map he had to draw. "ATTENTION, EVERYONE" Tenchi picked himself up off the floor, and turned his ATTENTION to the speaker. "PROCEED IMMEDIATELY TO THE FRONT OF THE HOUSE, A MAJOR EVENT IS ABOUT TO TAKE PLACE" He proceeded, not wanting to disobay Washu when she's like this. "What's all that racket down here?" "PROCEED IMMEDIATELY TO THE FRONT OF THE HOUSE" with the loudspeaker against Ryoko's head. The procession of three exited, Ryoko still partially stunned. They waited untill Mihoshi, Aeka, and Kiyone had gathered before Washu pointed towards the sky, at a quickly growing shape. Everyone watched, breathless, as a fireball streaked straight towards them. "You'd better cover your ears," advised Washu, doing the same. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 15 readouts flickered pointlessly throughout the tiny space. The unit hovering in the center of the small hollow activated the final shutdown routine and floated motionless for all of 3 seconds. The craft rocked violently as it touched Earth's surface for the first time, impact diffusion overloading almost instantly. The impact created a small crater in front of the Masaki house, but didn't even dent the interior cavity. A burst of inert gas escaped the ship as the single small door opened automatically. A lone form, apparantly injured, stumbled out onto the grass with practiced drama, and collapsed before a group of enraptured gazes. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "But where's he from then?" Washu ignored this question, probably from Mihoshi, and focused on the body on the ground. Ryoko had already gone to examine the "ship", probably not a good idea, but everyone else was too busy watching Washu's revival attempt to stop her. "Something's wrong with these injuries.", that with a voice nasal and far too mature for its bearer. "Yeah, they're there.", remarked Kiyone dryly as she tried to check for a pulse on a limp appendage. Washu granted her a tiny glance for that, "There's no blood flow to the areas of the injuries. But that's impossible unless..." She was interrupted as the "patient" began to convulse. Washu and Kiyone backed away just in time to allow a soft blue field to flicker around the still-prone body. Washu's face registered a rare look of confusion as her hovering unit tried to figure out what was happening. Tiny sparks flickered inside the field, closing wounds instantly. A shrill scream was heard, and ignored, from Mihoshi as the stranger suddenly started coughing and tried to sit up. He looked at the shocked faces gathered around him, and tried to stand up, only to be met by a glowing red ray projected from behind him. "Who are you?" uttered Ryoko coldly, still keeping him pinned to the ground. Washu moved to object that he just woke up, and besides he probably didn't know their languages. Ryoko just stood there, as if still waiting for an answer. A tiny spark from Washu's computer console returned him to unconsciousness. "Someone help me get him inside", she was perfectly calm despite the scene, which was more than could be said for the rest of the small croud present. "Well?", she prodded one more time before Aeka volunteered. A faint glow lifted the stranger and propelled him slowly towards the house. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2 hours later, Washu was still trying to analyze the visitor's cell structure. Only problem was, he didn't have one. In fact, she had yet to find an indication of material substance. "There's got to be something in there, a projection can't be self-sustaining.... without a power source anyway. So this thing has to have something in it, but its shielded." At that moment, a group of sirens and lights decided to go off. "How'd he get through that sub-continuity? Its supposed to be frozen to 3 microseconds." A slightly disturbing thought crossed her mind as she scrambled to shut down her temporal distortion pocket before it shattered. The subject flew across the room, almost landing in a tangle of assorted objects, as the field dropped, confirming Washu's earlier theory. She stood up before him, and aimed a shredder pistol his way. Without turning, he raised one hand, or a hand-like appendage terminus, and drew the weapon to it, where it instantly vaporized. Washu's face paled even more as he turned around. Somehow he seemed different than when she last saw him. "Washu, I presume?" ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Blip...blip...blip... The tracking system droned on. The officer monitoring it couldn't believe this had happened to him. One short night and here he was in the middle of nowhere monitoring the edge of the known galaxy. How was he supposed to know the drunken bimbo at that party was the director of the GP's granddaughter. "What was her name? Mi..Miho.." His boredom was suddenly interrupted as the "incoming" signal went off, startling him out of his chair. "What's goin' on out here?" the station commander burst out of his office and bellowed. "We've, uh, got a problem sir." "I can hear that" he keyed on the main viewscreen, which flickered into an image of the approaching object, on 5000x magnification it filled most of the screen with only 36 pixels. "what in hell is anyone doing all the way out here?" "Its almost a quarter parsec away, sir, shall I hail them?" "Not yet" was the response,"they probably can't see us yet, lets wait untill they get within 30,000 kil." "Sir, I'm reading a matter discharge heading our way" the young man was rightly startled, nothing short of a spatially fixed hyperspase pulse generator could track an object at 1/4 of a parsec. "Shields up!" shouted the commander, and a second later realized the hunk of rock his listening point was built on didn't have shields. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Far in the distance, a tiny rock-mounted listening post passed silently into oblivion. As the prelimenary data flowed through his spinal jack, completely supurfluous data, the large being on the command nexus grinned slightly. *If it's this easy the whole way, Ryoko, you'll be mine in no time.* He confirmed the order, and the hulking ship continued towards a distant, yellow star. ******************************************************************************************* Well, that's it for the first chapter. Email me at whitestar26@hotmail.com if you feel like it. I'll try to finish the next chapter in a month or so. I've got to work around my busy schedule after all (snicker). Untill then, all.