Copyright 2002 by Steve Robinson, All existing Tenchi characters are copyright Pioneer AIC. The character Ryeka is copyright 2002 by Steve Robinson (me) Disclaimer - Look, it's fan fic, so don't get bent out of shape. I thought up this idea a while ago, so I'm unabashedly pirating the Tenchi universe and bending it to my own nefarious purposes. I haven't read the millions of lines of existing fan fic, so I can't say for sure that no one else has written this story line, but if so, well great minds and all that. I am sure that if Pioneer and company refrains from suing me, so should you. Besides, I wouldn't be listening anyways, la la la.... This fic is posted in its entirety at http://www.viciousbunny.net/ ------------------------------------------------------------- Thicker than Blood Chapter 1 "Mommy, Mommy, I found you!!!!" Nine-year-old Ryeka Masaki shrieked with pleasure as she chased her mother around an enormous tree. Her laughter scattered through the leafy green forest that surrounded the Masaki estate. A light wind that had been holding it's breath, suddenly sprang up and rustled the leaves in the tall trees, as though they too were chuckling along with the ebullient child. "That's right, you did," said the older woman, the object of the child's pursuit, "but as I learned years ago before I married your father, finding and catching are two very different things." Mrs. Masaki danced lightly away, so easily that her feet barely seemed to touch the ground as she shifted and spun just out of her daughter's reach. She was a tall, full bosomed woman with straight, aristocratic posture and hair cut short and wavy, parted off center with just a hint of gray starting to show. She presented the appearance of a woman in her early forties, energetic but graceful. Indeed, she showed somewhat supernatural grace as she evaded her daughter's grasp. "Hey," Ryeka pouted as she grabbed after her mother's billowing robes, always a second late. "No fair! That's cheating!" "Who says it isn't fair?" Ryeka's mother challenged. "I never said I wouldn't cheat, and I never said you couldn't." "Just like a parent," Ryeka scowled, thinking to herself, "mixing homework and playtime. Well, two can play at that game. I've been practicing on my own for just such an occasion." Ryeka concentrated on summoning the powers that she had been born with but had barely begun to control. As the pair chased through the forest, the mysterious Jurai power swelled within Ryeka. Their strides grew into leaps as they dashed over fallen tree trunks, bounded up to high limbs and generally completely ignored commonly accepted theories of gravity. Little by little, Ryeka closed on her mother, which rather than pleasing her, increased her suspicion. "This is too easy. She's planning something," Ryeka thought, her hand inches from her mothers own teasingly outstretched hand. Confirming Ryeka's suspicion, Mrs. Masaki winked out of existence just as Ryeka reached her, leaving the young girl to stumble through the space where her mother had just been. Ryoko Masaki reappeared in front of a wide lake, near a discreet three story house. Smiling at her own sneakiness, she turned to go inside. And ran right into her daughter's outstretched arms. "GOTCHA," Ryeka howled with glee, "I guessed right and finally got you!" It took a moment for Ryoko to catch up with what had happened. At first she could only stand there dumbfounded as her daughter proudly hugged her. "Y-y-you teleported!!!!!" Ryoko gasped. "Uh-huh!" Ryeka beamed. "Grandma Washu taught me how last month! I told her how you always teleported away just as I was about to catch you. She said, knowing you, you were probably sneaking off to watch TV while I ran around the mountains looking for you." Ryeka stepped back and frowned at her mother. "That, by the way, is very not nice." Ryoko crossed her arms and tried to maintain her composure. She even tried to frown a little, but her lips refused to cooperate. She was just too proud. "Rye-ayka," Ryoko pronounced her daughters name sternly syllable by syllable, "How could you take your Grandma Washu's word over mine? After all, I am your mother." "Well, let's see," Ryeka feigned pensiveness. "I caught you didn't I?" Ryoko nodded, giving in and smiling. "Yes, you sure did." Ryeka twirled around happily, "Yea! Now it's my turn! I'll hide and you come find me!" Ryeka winked out of existence in the middle of one of her spins. "Catch me!" Her voiced whispered in Ryoko's mind. Ryoko counted to ten to give her daughter's taunt time to fade from her mind. After all, fair was fair, and using telepathy to locate Ryeka was strictly against the rules. After ten seconds, Ryoko dematerialized to go look for her daughter. She teleported to Funaho, the Jurai tree that had taken root nearly eight hundred years ago when Ryoko had destroyed its spaceship while battling the Juraian warrior Yosho. Ryoko reached out and touched the tree. She could feel the warmth of the strong life force within. These special Jurai trees formed a network of energy that spread out across the Universe to wherever they went aboard the massive tree- ships of the Jurai Empire. She could also faintly feel the spirit of Lord Yosho, who had joined with the tree when he had passed from the world a decade earlier. Melancholy passed over Ryoko, obscuring her happiness as a cloud passes over the sun. Even though he had been half Juraian, Yosho had chosen a life that had caused him to age, albeit slowly. His close proximity to Funaho had sustained him for nearly eight hundred years on Earth, but even the mightiest of the Juraian samurai could not live forever. Ryoko's melancholy passed swiftly to pangs of remorse. It was she that had driven Funaho to the Earth and destroyed its interstellar capabilities. In defense of the planet, Yosho had called upon great, but terrible powers to defeat Ryoko. Centuries later, a very changed Ryoko had stood repentantly before Tsunami, the First Tree of Jurai. She gained forgiveness for her crimes, but also a terrible burden. It was revealed that Earth was beyond the reach of the Jurai energy that sustained the great trees. By driving Yosho and Funaho to the Earth, Ryoko had condemned them both to a long slow death as, little by little, the Jurai power was expended from the great tree. And so, Yosho had aged and died, as had his daughter. His grandson, Tenchi, lived as mere mortal, not gaining any of the life extending powers of the Jurai tree at all. And so, Ryoko's own aged appearance was a facade she put on, to keep pace with her beloved Tenchi's natural aging. In fact, she was as youthful as she had been for the last few thousand years. "Just one more way I'll never be human," She thought bitterly. But, at least Ryeka was normal, Ryoko smiled and teleported away to look for her. Ryeka wasn't at the Masaki Shrine. Nor was she at the Demon Cave (no demon's there anymore, thank heavens), and not at home either. Ryoko began to suspect that her daughter was moving from one hiding place to another, to throw off the scent. Ryoko teleported to the hillside, a special place where she and Tenchi had spent many a tender moment in their, or his, youth. If fact, it was likely the place where they had conceived Ryeka. Ryoko blushed, remembering. Of course, they couldn't be sure. Once Tenchi had finally opened up and they had become an "item", there had been many such places. Lost in thought, Ryoko barely noticed a presence around her. When she did, she thought it might be Ryeka sneaking up on her. She whirled around and shouted "Boo!!!" The shock caused several of the soldiers to soil their uniforms. They froze, weapons still trained on Ryoko, petrified. Ryoko was just as surprised to see them. "Uh, hey," she said innocently. "Can I help you?" Their officer came to his senses first. "Fire!" he shouted. The soldiers fired their weapons. Ryoko's mind twisted in panic. She thought frantically for her daughter. Was she safe? Had the soldiers gotten her? In her fear for Ryeka, she completely failed to defend herself. The soldiers' weapons fired a strange sort of plasma that coated her and burned her with a blinding pain! Well, perhaps not a blinding pain. In fact, there wasn't any pain at all, just a sticky sort of wet feeling. Ryoko smirked and charged up a small, insulting fireball, but just then she found the plasma had crystallized, sealing her in a clear glassy shell. Angrily she summoned her power, balls of energy that gathered in her hands and blasted outwards against the shell. Instead of shattering, the crystal seemed only to grow denser, more solid. The soldiers, who had almost been cowering, seemed to take stock in this reaction. "It worked," the officer snapped into his comlink. "Take this demon aboard!" Soldiers rushed forward and attached some kind of anti gravity clamps to Ryoko's immobilized body. Angrily, she blasted again and again against the crystal shell. Each time, however, the shell grew denser and more solid, almost as if it were using Ryoko's power to strengthen itself. Growing weaker with each expenditure of energy, Ryoko began to feel light-headed. As she passed out, she suddenly had a thought. "Those looked like Jurai military uniforms..." It was getting darker, and Ryeka was getting bored. It had never taken her mother this long to find her before. True, she had really tried hard this time, teleporting again and again from place to place, each time discretely reaching out telepathically in advance to be sure that her mother wasn't there. She used her telepathic link to her mother cautiously, for it was nearly impossible for either of them to use it without alerting the other. And of course, using telepath was cheating. Sometimes, though, when one was preoccupied, the other could discreetly eavesdrop without detection. Several times while hiding from her mother, Ryeka had detected that Ryoko was deep in thought. That was probably why she hadn't found her. "Still," Ryeka thought crossly. "She shouldn't forget the object of the game." Ryeka decided to give up. She reached out, making no effort to disguise her telepathy, to find her mother. There was nothing. Ryeka was stunned, and she felt the cold adrenaline rush of fear as she reached out into the alien void that had formerly always contained the familiar presence of her mother's mind. She had never failed to find her mother before. Panicking, she reached out with all her power, and again found nothing. "Mommy?" Ryeka called out. Her growing fear and panic made it hard to concentrate on using her power. As she often did when she was scared, she forgot that she could control powerful cosmic forces almost to the point of bending reality. Instead, she became more and more a terrified, very human girl. "Mommy?" she cried out again. "Mommy!" Ryeka stumbled through the woods, crying out into the falling night. She ran from place to place, from the lake to the shrine, to the cave and back home. Ryoko was nowhere to be found. Ryeka collapsed on the long run of stone steps that her mother and father had carried her up so many times. "Mommy," she cried, huddling up, tearstained cheeks pressed against her knees. She heard long, slow footsteps far down the steps. She looked up. A shadowy figure was wearily making its way up the steps. "Daddy!!!" Ryeka dashed down into Tenchi Masaki's arms.