Tsuzuki Muyo!


INTRODUCTION:

Here's the second episode of my Tenchi Muyo series-hope you like it.  It's based on the OVA series (not counting the second Tenchi movie), and just to warn you Ayeka, Mihoshi, and Sasami aren't in this episode (but I swear they'll be back soon).  I also added Kiyone to this series, since I really like her character.  The first episode of the series is located on my sorry-looking website at http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Bridge/4210/index.html, and in the archives of rec.arts.anime.creative.

Hope you enjoy the story--please let me know if you liked it, and if you hated it...well...(sweatdrop)...at least it's just a hobby and not my day job.  I would definitely appreciate any constructive C&C you have...please send any comments to brian_j_smith@mindspring.com.

-Brian

Fine Print: Tenchi Muyo is the intellectual property of Pioneer and AIC.  I have no rights to these characters whatsoever.  Hopefully Pioneer/AIC won't mind my borrowing their characters for a little while.


EPISODE 2: PARALLEL


    Iyami woke up to a particularly unpleasant sound, followed by an equally unpleasant thought.  The sound was Namekuji whistling, and the thought was realizing that he was in prison.  He couldn't say he didn't deserve to be in jail, since he was on trial in a week for six billion counts of attempted murder from trying to blow up the Earth.  This was enough to land him 120 billion years in a maximum-security prison, plus whatever jail time the spaceship theft and building a weapon of mass destruction charges tacked on to that.  His court-assigned lawyer was nervous, enthusiastic, and in Iyami's judgment, completely incompetent.  Iyami had always believed that with a high-priced enough lawyer you could get away with any crimes you wanted, but attempting to destroy an entire populated planet and take over the galaxy was probably beyond even the most expensive lawyer's power.  And he didn't have an expensive lawyer, he had a guy who looked like he had just passed the bar last week and was still hung over from the celebration.  Namekuji kept whistling the same note over and over.  Iyami really wanted to sleep, and toyed with ignoring the sound completely.  It didn't work.

    "Will you shut up?" Iyami yelled.  Namekuji stopped whistling.

    "Sorry, Mr. I.  Are they going to execute us, you think?" he asked in the same unconcerned tone as if he were asking about the weather.

    "The Galaxy Police doesn't have capital punishment, or otherwise the answer would be definitely yes.  Instead they're just going to lock us up in some miserable prison on some God-forsaken asteroid for several times longer than the current age of the universe.  We'll live in misery and deprivation there for the rest of our stinking lives.  Hopefully they'll be short," Iyami said bitterly.

    "Why would we want short prisoners--"

    "Hopefully our lives will be short.  Yours in particular.  With my luck, you'll probably be whistling that same stupid note over and over as I'm dying.  What the hell are you trying to whistle anyway?" Iyami asked.

    "You like it?" Namekuji asked.  "I wrote it myself."

    "Did you," Iyami said wearily, closing his eyes and slowly banging his head against the wall.

    "It goes like this," Namekuji said, starting to whistle the same note over and over again.

    "Just...kill...me...now..." Iyami said, in time to banging his head on the wall.

    "Do you like it?" Namekuji asked.

    "For...the...love...of...God..." Iyami said as he kept banging his head into the wall.  He looked around him for something to throw at Namekuji, felt something in his jacket, and pulled out the palm-sized black device he had found back on the Earth.

    "I completely forgot about this," Iyami muttered, turning it over in his hands and seeing the red "Start" button blinking at him.  He considered throwing it as hard as he could at Namekuji's head, but he was curious about what it was for.  Before they had put them in jail, they had walked through a scanner, and if this were any known type of electronic device it should have set the scanner off.  If it wasn't electronic, what was it?, Iyami asked himself.

    Looking at Namekuji whistling in the corner of the cell, Iyami decided there was no way the device could make things any worse.  He took a deep breath, hoped the device wasn't a bomb, and pressed the start button.  The button vanished, then was replaced with the words "Select origin" with buttons for "Current" or "Other" under it. He pressed "Current".  "Select destination" appeared, and Iyami's heart started beating faster.  This, he thought, could be an impossibly compact teleporter-his ticket out of jail.  This time the buttons read "Current Universe" or "Other".  Iyami wondered what the hell "Other" meant, but hit "Current Universe" instead.  A map of the universe appeared on the screen and he zoomed his way in to the Earth.  In the remote chance that this device actually was a teleporter, he wanted to go back to Earth and see if there was any other advanced technology lying around.  Specifically, he wondered if there was a weapon there that would make the dimensional cannon look like a firecracker.  With an alien superweapon, he thought, the universe would be his after all.  Iyami selected the Earth as his destination, then pressed the "Go" button.  For a moment, nothing happened.

    "Damn," Iyami muttered.  "I guess it was too good to be-"

    His voice trailed off, as a black circle appeared out of nowhere on the wall next to them, slowly expanding with electricity crackling around its circumference.

    "The wall's got a hole in it," Namekuji said.

    "Your brain's got a hole in it.  More likely a lot of holes with not a lot of substance to break them up," Iyami said, staring at the pitch black circle as it grew large enough to walk into.  A moment later the circle began sucking them towards it like it was a giant vacuum cleaner.

    "Aaaaaaaaarrrgghh!" they yelled as they were picked up and sucked into the circle.  A second later the circle vanished, and the cell was quiet.



    Kiyone climbed up into a hammock in front of the Masaki house and looked up at the sky.  This was the perfect way to relax, she told herself as she swung both of her feet into the hammock and felt herself swaying between the trees.  The morning sun was streaming down, the air was warm, and Kiyone couldn't find a cloud in the sky.  Headquarters had told her to wait on Earth until Mihoshi returned to Earth, then to report on any new developments in the Masaki house.  She had finished all the paperwork for Iyami's arrest, and for the first time in years had pretty much nothing work-related to do.  Tenchi and his father had offered to let her stay as long as she wanted, and she had gladly taken them up on their offer, although Ryoko had looked somewhat annoyed for some reason.  Kiyone hadn't taken a vacation since graduating from the academy two years ago, and the thought of having a whole day with nothing better to do than sit in a hammock in the sun and read a book was incredibly appealing.  In this remote corner of the galaxy far from Mihoshi, Kiyone thought, there was nothing that should prevent her from having a relaxing week off.



    On the lake next to the Masaki house, Ryoko watched the surface of the water closely as she leaned over the side of the canoe.  Ryo-Ohki made a quizzical "meow" as she looked over the side also, seeing nothing.  Ryoko wasn't sure she liked fishing, although sitting in the sun in a canoe with Tenchi was nice.  It wasn't quite romantic with Nobuyuki sitting between them holding the fishing rod, but Ryoko reflected there were much worse ways to spend a morning.  Still, she couldn't help thinking the real way to fish would be for Ryo-Ohki to transform and pump enough laser fire into the lake to boil it--then they wouldn't have to wait for the damn fish to take so long finding the bait.

    "The fish just aren't biting today for some reason," Nobuyuki said, wiping his forehead.

    Of course not, Ryoko thought, they're probably afraid you'll make a pass at them.  Ryoko rose up out of the canoe and levitated about a foot over it, scanning the lake with her hand shading her eyes.  She thought she saw something, then looked slightly away from it, counting on her peripheral vision to have a better sense of motion...

    "Um, Ryoko..." Tenchi started to say, "the canoe's not very stable, so..."  Suddenly she saw her target.

    "There!" Ryoko cried, pulling back her arm and shooting a ball of energy across the water.  With a huge splash the ball struck its target and a rain of water crashed down on the canoe some twenty feet away.  Tenchi couldn't remember the rest of his sentence as water dripped off of his face and clothes.  He was drenched.  Nobuyuki sneezed and Ryoko looked back at Tenchi sheepishly.

    "I think I got one, Tenchi," Ryoko said, right as a charcoal-black fried fish dropped out of the sky onto her head.  It hit her head with a smack, then bounced off into the water.  Tenchi and Nobuyuki started laughing, as Ryoko crossly wiped fishy-smelling ash out of her hair.

    "Maybe we don't the fishing rod after all, Tenchi," Nobuykui said.

    "Ryoko, you're a very...unconventional fisherman," Tenchi finally said, smirking at her.

    "I got the fish, didn't I?" Ryoko said, shrugging.  Ryo-Ohki sneezed.

    "Let's go back in and dry off," Tenchi suggested.  "I think we've done enough fishing for today."



    In the field next to where Iyami's spaceship had crashed on Earth, a flat, black circle suddenly appeared in the air out of nowhere.  With a yell, Iyami and Namekuji were launched out of the circle, face-planting into the grass.  The circle crackled with electricity, then abruptly shrank and vanished.

    "Ow..." Namekuji said, rubbing the back of his head and sitting up.  Iyami spit out a mouthful of grass and sat up and looked around.  He still had the black device clenched in his palm.  He looked down at it, then put it back in his jacket.

    "What an annoying way to travel," Iyami muttered as he sat up and brushed himself off.  A short distance away, where his ship had crashed, was freshly-planted grass and a mound of dirt.  Someone had erased all evidence of his ship having crashed here.  He wondered who would have bothered.

    "What are we here for, Mr. I?" Namekuji said, standing up.  Iyami got up and pointed towards the old, abandoned house.

    "We're here to find alien technology, my incompetent friend," he explained.  "Preferably a really powerful weapon," he added.  He stopped and turned to see a column of smoke rising over the trees a long ways off.  He wondered if there was another house nearby.  They might have some strange artifacts as well, but they're probably too stupid to know how to use them, he thought.  He looked down at the device in his jacket and smiled.  He had a plan.

    "Where are we going, Mr. I?" Namekuji said, as Iyami strode purposefully towards the column of smoke.

    "I have a brilliant plan.  Follow me," Iyami said.  Namekuji shrugged and shuffled off after his boss.  "You know, Namekuji.  When I rule the universe, maybe I'll name a planet after you.  The rest of the universe will be re-named after me, of course," Iyami explained.

    "That's nice, Mr. I," Namekuji replied, causing Iyami to briefly wince at hearing his least favorite nickname.

    "Yes, I'll find the sorriest, most wretched planet in the whole galaxy, and as soon as I take over that will be known as 'Planet Namekuji'," Iyami continued.

    "That would be nice, eh?  Give the people that live there someone to look up to, like a role model," Namekuji replied.  Iyami shook his head.

    "Something like that," Iyami muttered.



    Kiyone climbed out of her hammock and stretched in the noonday sun.  She had fallen asleep, and her stomach's growling told her it was probably late enough to be time for lunch.  Kiyone wondered if her superiors were going to assign her and Mihoshi to Earth as resident officers.  She winced at the thought, since it would probably be a career dead-end.  Then again, she thought, that might not be true.  For some reason Earth had been the center of attention lately, since the battles with Kagato and Dr. Clay had taken place near here.  This probably had something to do with Mihoshi's uncanny ability to attract trouble, Kiyone thought.  She walked to the Masaki's front door and rang the doorbell, just as her stomach growled again noisily.  Tenchi opened the door with Ryoko standing next to him.

    "Ready for lunch?" Tenchi said with a grin.

    "Definitely," Kiyone replied emphatically.  They walked into the living room as Washu walked out of her lab, stretched, and sat down at the table with everyone else.

    "Where's Yosho and Nobuyuki?" Washu asked, ready to dive into her food.

    "They're up at the shrine fixing something," Tenchi replied.

    "Oh," Washu replied.  She picked up a bowl of noodles and started inhaling them, then paused as she heard a strange noise.  It sounded like crackling electricity.  Washu looked down at the early-warning watch she had invented and it said everything was fine.  Since the watch was designed by her, the number one genius scientist in the universe, she knew it was capable of detecting any known or unknown attack.  She shrugged and went back to slurping down noodles.

    After a second she stopped, and looked at everyone sitting across from her.  No one was eating, but they had blank looks on their faces and seemed to be staring at something.

    "What?" Washu asked.  "I'm hungry, OK?" she said a little defensively.

    "W-W-W-," Tenchi said, pointing at something behind her.  Washu turned around and saw a huge black portal.

    "Aaa!" she yelled, dropping the bowl of noodles on the table in shock.  Her invention was perfect-there was no way it shouldn't have detected a sub-space portal.  And yet...

    Washu's thoughts were cut off as the portal suddenly sucked everyone into it.

    "Tenchi!" Ryoko yelled, grabbing him and straining to pull him away from it.  A moment later the suction was even too powerful for Ryoko, and they both tumbled into the void.



    "Mission accomplished," Iyami said smugly, standing in the empty living room of the Masaki house.  The room looked like a tornado had hit it, which wasn't very far from the truth.

    "Can we watch TV, Mr. I?" Namekuji said, eagerly pointing to the TV set.

    "No, you idiot!  Look for anything out of the ordinary.  Anything at all.  I sent those idiots to a parallel universe so I don't think we'll be hearing from them again...ever, but other people might be home any minute."

    "Right, Mr. I," Namekuji said.  A lamp flew through the air, smashing apart when it hit him in the back and knocking him down.  "Ow..." Namekuji said.

    "And don't call me Mr. I," Iyami growled.



    Washu felt like she was in a deep sleep.  She was reliving a night a few days back, right after the king of Jurai had left for home.  She had been sitting with Yosho on the steps of the shrine, each of them on probably their third bottle of sake as the sun set over the lake.  She had been walking around the shrine when Yosho had seen her and offered her some sake, and that was an offer Washu didn't refuse.

    "This is great sake, Yosho," Washu said, taking another sip and feeling pleasantly buzzed.

    "I'm glad you like it.  For someone as little as you are, Washu-chan, you can really put it back," Yosho said with a grin, "I'm not sure how much longer I can keep up with you," he continued, feeling pleasantly buzzed himself.

    "Yosho," Washu asked, sounding a little serious.

    "Mmm?"

    "There's something I want to ask you," Washu continued, looking over at him and locking eye contact.

    "Go ahead," Yosho replied.

    "Why don't you show people your true appearance?" Washu said.  Yosho looked startled for a second, then looked back out over the lake and took another sip of sake.

    "I could ask you the same question, Washu-chan," Yosho replied.

    "I told Tenchi the reason, I assumed you would have heard from him," Washu replied.

    "He did tell me.  I'm sorry about your loss, Washu.  To have a child taken from a mother is a terrible thing," he said, looking back at her.

    "So what's your story?" Washu asked.  Yosho took another long drink.

    "I loved my wife," Yosho said slowly, "And I loved getting old with her.  After she passed away..." he continued, sighing heavily, "it just didn't seem right to going back to my younger self, not now that she was gone."

    "I'm sure if she were here, she would want you to enjoy your youth and not hide it with old age," Washu said.

    "Maybe," Yosho replied.  "But I doubt your son would want you to be a child, either, and not enjoy being an adult."  Washu laughed.

    "Touche, Yosho," Washu replied, raising her glass and tapping it against his before they both drank deeply. 

    "Tenchi and the others would never have survived the battle with Dr. Clay without you," Yosho said.  "I'm glad they found you."  Washu looked from Yosho out to the lake.

    "Well, when you're the number one scientist in the universe, there's nothing you can't do," she said, grinning.  Yosho looked over at Washu.

    "Washu-chan?" Yosho said.  She turned a slightly deeper shade of red and looked back at him.  "I don't mean this as an insult, but being number one at anything is an illusion.  Once I was the best swordsman Jurai had ever seen, but I know when Tenchi is older, he will be far better. Being number one lasts only until you find someone who exceeds your talent, and the universe is vast enough that that someone will always be out there," Yosho continued, pausing to sip on his sake.  "It doesn't matter if you're number one or number one billion, as long as you have people around you who care about you," he said, looking over at Washu.  "In the end, what defeated Dr. Clay wasn't genius or the Jurai power, but your daughter's love for Tenchi."  Washu and Yosho looked at each other in silence for a while.  Washu slowly turned her eyes back to the lake.

    "Maybe you're right, Yosho," she said finally.  "It's just hard for me to accept.  Until I meet that better scientist, it's impossible for me to believe I'm not number one."  Yosho nodded silently, then finished the rest of his sake and tapped Washu on the shoulder.

    "Ready for more sake?" he said, grinning. Washu laughed.

    "I bet I'm the number one sake drinker in this shrine right now," Washu replied, wagging a finger at Yosho.  Yosho put his hands up in the air in mock surrender and laughed.

    "Hmmm...normally I wouldn't have a drinking contest with a child, but since you're older than I am I guess it's OK," he replied, reaching for another bottle.  They both laughed as the last piece of the sun dipped below the horizon.



    The headache Washu had now was pretty close, she thought, to the headache she had after that drinking contest with Yosho.  She vaguely remembered getting to bottle number five or so, but she couldn't say who had won because they had both passed out on the steps of the shrine.  The next morning, like now, it had felt like someone was trying to get out of the inside of her head with a hammer.  The blackness around her slowly faded, and she found herself lying on dirt, looking up at the night sky.  She vaguely remembered her dream, re-living what Yosho had told her.  Number two?, she thought.  She couldn't be number two--there was no one she had ever met as brilliant as her.  Still, for some reason what Yosho had said made sense, and it bothered her.  Washu sat up with a start as she remembered the portal.  She looked around her quickly, wincing as this made her head feel even worse.  Around her, Kiyone, Tenchi, Ryo-Ohki, and Ryoko were lying on the ground, all starting to move a little and making various groaning noises.  Washu looked up, and saw something she couldn't really explain.

    "Washu?" Kiyone said, opening her eyes and seeing Washu looking up at the sky with a strange look on her face.  Kiyone turned to see what Washu was looking at, and her jaw dropped.  Hanging in the night sky, casting a bluish glow on their surroundings, was a huge planet.  It was about ten times the apparent diameter of the moon, which caused it to take up a lot of real estate in the sky.

    "What the..." Washu started to say. They were lying on the dirt, with hedges on either side of them that were ten feet high and immaculately trimmed.  In both directions, the dirt walkway they were lying on turned, making it look like some kind of maze.  Dominating the skyline, maybe a mile away from them, were the golden towers of a palace.  The architecture, Washu vaguely remembered from classes in school long ago, was typical of Jurai.

    "Is anyone hurt?" Kiyone asked, as Ryoko, Ryo-Ohki, and Tenchi began to sit up and come to their senses.

    "No," Tenchi said, shaking his head.

    "I'm fine," Ryoko said, somewhat unsteadily getting up on her feet.  She looked up and saw the planet hanging there.  "What the hell is that?" she exclaimed.  "Washu, where are we?"

    "Jurai," Washu said, typing on her virtual keyboard.  "But...not our Jurai," she said, sounding puzzled.  Her virtual keyboard still worked, but she couldn't access any of her lab's equipment remotely.  Her lab, she was sure, was indestructible, and she had it set up to be accessible from anywhere in the universe.  She could at least access the Jurai internet, however, and she quickly found out the planet hanging in the sky was Futago, a planet she'd never heard of before.  In the normal universe, there was no comparably-sized planet near Jurai.  According to her data, Jurai was also in the wrong place by a couple dozen light-years.  Washu started to stand up, then the solution came to her like a punch in the stomach.  She fell back down.

    "Are you OK, Washu?" Kiyone asked, walking over to her.  Washu was sitting in the dust looking up at Futago with a blank stare on her face.

    "I know where we are," Washu said.

    "Where?" Kiyone asked, walking over to her with Tenchi and Ryoko.  Ryo-Ohki hissed at Futago.

    "The problem is...it's impossible to be here," Washu continued, turning white as a sheet.  She had proven at the Science Academy that travel between universes was impossible, but everything around her pointed to their being in a parallel universe.  It wasn't time travel, because she would have detected that.  They hadn't moved in space, either, and she would have detected any disturbance in the past big enough to cause this kind of change in the present.

    "Impossible to be where, Washu?" Tenchi asked.

    "We're...in a parallel universe," Washu said in awe.  She had to admit it made the most sense.  In a parallel universe there was no guarantee anything would be the same, but it was likely things would at least be familiar.  Jurai wasn't where it should be, but it was still familiar.  Futago didn't exist at all in the normal universe, but in a parallel universe things didn't have to be exactly the same.  It was like putting the real universe on crack.

    "A parallel universe?" Kiyone asked.  "Did that black portal bring us here?"

    "It must have," Washu replied, finally standing up and swallowing hard.  "But I was sure there was no way to do this.  Travel between universes..." her voice trailed off.

    "How do we get back, Washu?" Tenchi asked.

    "We don't," Washu replied, looking down at the ground.  "It's impossible.  I wrote a paper on it being impossible."

    "What!" Ryoko yelled.  "There has to be a way back, Washu!"

    "You're right," Washu said, looking at her.  "But I have no idea what it is."

    "Washu, you're the greatest scientist in the universe," Kiyone said, hoping flattery would work.  "You have to know."  Washu looked at the Jurai-style palace and thought back to her conversation with Yosho.

    "Maybe..." Washu said, her voice lowering, "...maybe, Kiyone, I'm not the greatest after all."  Tenchi looked at Washu's face and saw something he had never seen there before.  It was a look of incomprehension.  He glanced over at Ryoko, who silently mouthed "oh, shit" to him.  Tenchi couldn't agree more.



    Mirei stood on the bridge of Iyami's spaceship and looked out at Jurai rising over Futago's horizon.  The blue crescent of Jurai rising over Futago was possibly, she thought, the most beautiful sight she had seen in the past hundred years.  She looked around the cavernous bridge, and Iyami had not yet returned.  Mirei knew he would eventually, and the thought sent a chill down her spine.

    Until meeting Iyami, Mirei had spent her entire life alone.  She had lived on a spaceship in the middle of the Sargasso Sea, a vast tract of space that for some reason attracted wrecked spaceships.  She was a young girl, with long auburn hair and eyes, and she had been terribly lonely.  She possessed amazing power, although to her it was just something she had always had, so she didn't consider it exceptional.  She could create and destroy matter out of thin air.  This had kept her occupied throughout the decades, as she would change a dilapidated ballroom into a freshly decorated one full of smiling people.  The people were harder to create because she had to focus of them or they would cease being animated.  Her record was a conversation between ten people at once, but concentrating hard enough to do that had worn her out. Her imaginary friends were more real than anyone else's ever could be, but they were incapable of surprising her, because they only said and did what she willed them to do.

    One day Mirei had been standing on the bridge of her spaceship, looking at the one thing on the ship she couldn't touch.  On the bridge was a black palm-sized device, and whenever Mirei tried to pick it up or manipulate it, her hands went right through it.  It was black and perfectly smooth with a blinking "Start" button on it, and she felt like it had something to do with her.  The ship's computers had been damaged to the point she couldn't get any information on who she was or why she was there out of them, but she wondered if the strange black device would have some clue.

    Looking out the window on that day, Mirei had seen nothing but the hulks of other ships out the window, coasting through space.  She had been wondering if there was any other life in the universe, a thought that must have gone through her head a billion times.  She had been conscious for a hundred years now, but she had no idea why.  She knew her name, and had a picture of herself on a bench on the mantle of her stateroom.  Surely, Mirei had thought, someone else must have been there to take the picture.  Her parents, maybe?  But what had happened to them?  Her thoughts had been interrupted by the spaceship drifting towards her.  At first she had jumped back, but then she realized this was what she had always dreamed of.  A visitor.  Unfortunately for her, it had been Iyami.



    Iyami sat in his stateroom and looked out at the same rising Jurai Mirei was watching from the bridge.  Iyami in the parallel universe had exactly the same personality and disposition as his counterpart in the normal universe.  He also had the exact same goal-becoming the ruler of the universe.  

    Iyami had found Mirei by accident, when he had picked up the huge power source in the Sargasso Sea.  She had no idea what the black device had been, but to her surpise, Iyami could touch it and operate it.  Iyami soon discovered it was the remote control for the ultimate weapon.  What had surprised Iyami was that activating the weapon just gave Mirei the freedom to leave the ship she had been confined in for so long.  He had been livid until he realized that the diminutive girl was the ultimate weapon.  He had commanded her to destroy an empty nearby ship, and to his and Mirei's shock, she had blasted it into a billion pieces with a mere wave of her hand.  She had begged him to let her go, that she didn't want to be a weapon, and Iyami had felt bad for her and promised her that after she carried out a special mission for him, she could be free.  Well, Iyami thought, he hadn't actually felt bad for her, but most people probably would have.  He had no intention of ever setting her free either, because she was the biggest source of power he had ever seen.  He couldn't destroy the Jurai with her, at least not directly.  However, he could use her to steal the Tenchi-ken, the sword that turned the Jurai power into a blade, from the palace on Jurai.  That way not only would the Jurai not have it, but Iyami planned to adapt it to channel Mirei's power-then, he hoped, she would be able to break through the light-hawk wings, defeat the Jurai royal family, and put himself on the throne.  Iyami smirked as he contemplated his plan-it would be simple for Mirei to steal the sword, and how hard could it be to adapt it to run on her power instead of the Jurai power?

    Iyami rose from his chair and walked towards the door, banging his shin into a coffee table on the way.

    "Son of a bitch," he yelled, rubbing his shin.  The problem with having a properly evil, ominous-looking ship, Iyami thought, is that everything was painted black and the lights were always appropriately dimmed.  This made it hard to see where he was going.

    "Are you OK, Mr. I?" Namekuji asked, getting up from the couch where he had been sleeping.  Iyami nearly jumped through the roof, since he hadn't seen Namekuji there.  He hit his other leg on the coffee table in the course of jumping back.

    "Damn!" Iyami yelled again.  "Lights!" he yelled, and all the lights in the room shut off.  Iyami swore under his breath in the darkness.  "Lights on...as bright as possible!" he called again, and the ship's computer brought the lights up to the same low intensity they had been at before.  Iyami could swear he heard the ship's computer chuckling at him, but he decided to let it go because he had more important things to do.  "Come on, Namekuji," Iyami called.  "We're going to the bridge."

    "Why's that, Mr. I?"

    "To send Mirei on a little errand," Iyami replied with a malevolent grin.  He strode purposefully towards the door, which slid open promptly.  Iyami tripped on a black extension cord in the gloom, face-planting just outside the door.  The door picked that instant to close, nailing him in the ribs.

    "Watch out, there's a cord there, Mr. I," Namekuji said.  Iyami seethed.

    "Thank you," he replied sarcastically, getting up in time for the door to try to close on him again.  This time he jumped out of the way and continued on to the bridge, not in a particularly good mood.



    "What is a parallel universe, anyway, Washu?" Ryoko asked.  Washu looked up at Futago, and was lost in her own thoughts.  She wasn't used to being wrong, in fact, she couldn't remember the last time she'd been wrong.  But she had been very, very wrong about inter-universe travel.  Washu wanted to kick herself--she told herself she should have known that someone would figure out a way to travel between universes, but she had assumed because she couldn't figure it out no one could.  "Washu?" Ryoko asked again, waving her hand in front of Washu's face.  "Anyone home?"

    "Sorry," Washu muttered, snapping out of her reverie.  "Parallel universes?"

    "What is a parallel universe, Washu?" Tenchi asked.  Washu took a deep breath.  She had been one of the most feared professors at the academy because students would go entire lectures and not understand a single thing that she said.  Rather than launch into a scientific explanation she knew no one would understand, she tried to think of a metaphor.

    "OK," Washu finally said.  "Picture our universe as a flat sheet of paper, which only exists in two dimensions," she said.  "A parallel universe is like another flat sheet of paper, parallel to ours so that it never touches.  The only way to travel from one sheet of paper to the other is through a third dimension, right?"  Everyone nodded.  "Well, that's exactly what the real world is like, except in reality not counting time the universe has three dimensions--length, width, and depth--instead of two.  The same principle applies, though--to travel to a parallel universe you would have to pass through a different, fourth dimension which can't be observed.  Do you follow me?"

    "I think so," Tenchi replied.  Kiyone and Ryoko nodded.  Ryo-Ohki meowed.

    "So how do we get back to our universe?" Ryoko asked.

    "Well, that's what I thought no one could do," Washu said, chagrined.  "Traveling through an extra dimension to reach another universe should be impossible."

    "But someone's figured it out," Kiyone said.  "And sent us here--but why?"

    "To get us out of the way?" Ryoko asked.

    "Maybe," Kiyone replied.  "But why not just kill us?"  Washu thought about that for a moment.

    "That's a good question," Washu said finally.

    "So we're trapped here, Washu?  You must be able to find a way back!" Tenchi exclaimed.  Washu frowned.

    "Now that I know it's possible, maybe I can extrapolate backwards from the data and find out how it was done," Washu said.  "But my lab is back in our universe so I have nothing to work with.  Plus the power requirements would be greater than all of you together could possibly provide.  It would take all of Tenchi's power just to keep us from being crushed as we passed through a wormhole in the fourth dimension."

    "How come we didn't get crushed getting here, Washu-chan?" Tenchi asked.

    "I don't know.  Someone was drawing on an incredible amount of power.  For us to get back, though, we'll have to use a wormhole and that means you'll be using all your energy just to protect us from the forces inside it," Washu replied.

    "But someone must have figured out another way," Kiyone replied.

    "I know," Washu replied dejectedly.  "Maybe someone found a way to do it that takes less power.  But I don't think we have time to figure it out."

    "Whoever sent us here probably didn't figure we'd have such a brilliant scientist with us," Kiyone suggested, trying to prop up Washu's ego.  Washu smiled.  It worked.

    "Well, maybe," Washu said.  "To start we'd need a lab I could work in.  And a huge power source, based in this universe, that could get us home."

    "Let's get started then," Ryoko said.  "What do you need first?"

    "Wait a minute," Kiyone said.  "Washu, was planet are we on, anyway?"

    "Jurai," Washu replied.

    "Jurai doesn't have a moon!" Ryoko protested, pointing to Futago hanging in the sky above them.

    "I know," Washu said.  "It's a parallel universe, so while things are similar they won't be exactly the same."

    "So there could be another me here somewhere?" Tenchi said, wondering how he could convince himself that he had just dropped in from a parallel universe.

    "Possibly," Washu replied.  "Although time here doesn't have to line up perfectly with time back home.  None of us might exist here yet at all," she continued.

    "Well--" Kiyone started to say, but she was cut off by every alarm in the palace compound going off at once.



    Mirei had known it wouldn't be easy to get out, and Iyami had commanded her to eliminate any obstacles in her way.  As much as she wanted to, she couldn't disobey his orders because his remote control gave him control over her.  However, she thought, she could stun people instead of killing them and they would still be eliminated as a threat.

    "Halt!" one of the guards yelled, racing towards her with his wooden staff raised.  Mirei flinched although he was still twenty feet away, and her powers insured the man was no threat.  She wasn't used to people that weren't figments of her imagination, and the real ones at the moment seemed to all be bent on arresting her.  Mirei fired a bolt of energy at him, dropping him, stunned to the ground.  The other guard, still twenty feet away, froze in shock at seeing what looked like an ordinary twelve-year old girl dropping his partner.  He raised his staff and charged, wishing that the Jurai guards had more modern weapons than a wooden staff so he could just shoot her.  A second later, he dropped to the ground after getting hit with a second energy bolt from Mirei's hand.  Mirei walked over, with the Tenchi-ken sword inside a container to keep her from getting electrocuted by it in one hand.  She bent down and checked the guard's pulse to make sure he was still alive.

    "Sorry," she said sincerely.  "It's not my idea, honest!"  Then Iyami's commands echoed in her head, and she was drawn on down the corridor.



    Ryoko levitated up above the maze to see what was going on.  The sirens and alarms were annoying, and the flashing red lights everywhere made the whole scene look like a carnival in hell.  She scanned the horizon and didn't see anything particularly alarming.  At least, she didn't until she saw the phalanx of Jurai guards about to come around the corner and run right into them. Ryoko instinctively flinched back in the air when she saw them, then quickly dropped back down.

    "Jurai guards!" she said, forming an energy sword as she spoke, "coming around that corner!" At the moment she finished her sentence, the first Jurai guards rounded a corner of the maze, and were standing thirty feet in front of the group.  Ryoko stood menacingly in front of the group with her energy sword in her hand.  "I hope they're insured," she muttered.

    "Get them!" one of the guards yelled.

    "Wait, we're--" Tenchi started to protest, when the first couple guards went down.  The next ones rounded the corner and were immediately dropped as well.  Ryoko, who had been expecting to enter hand-to-hand combat with them, blinked and turned  to see Kiyone standing next to her with her blaster smoking.

    "It's on wide-area stun," Kiyone explained.  "I thought that might be easier."

    "Nice," Ryoko said, picking up one of the Jurai guards' wooden staffs and throwing it to Tenchi.

    "I think we should get out of here," Washu suggested.

    "What finding a power source to get us out of here?" Tenchi asked.  "Shouldn't we ask someone at the palace-"

    "I don't think anyone's in the mood for talking to us right now," Ryoko observed.

    "We'll have to worry about the power source later.  For now we just need to find somewhere I can use as a lab," Washu said, sounding frustrated.

    "How do we find a lab?" Kiyone asked, still eyeing both directions down the passageway in case more guards appeared.  She didn't have to wait long.  Another group of guards rounded the corner behind them, staffs raised for attack.  Tenchi set his feet and raised his staff, once again glad his grandfather had spent all those hours training him.  Ryoko flung a fireball at the hedges in front of them, and the path was quickly blocked by smoldering branches.  They could hear the guards on the other side shouting, but they couldn't get through.

    "Good job," Kiyone said to Ryoko, looking at the power level on her blaster and cursing herself for not having spare power clips on her.  "I'm almost out of power."

    "I think it's time we got out of here," Ryoko said, levitating to look for the way out.  Fortunately, she thought, it wasn't the way that she had just blasted shut.  "This way," she said, rushing ahead down the passageway.



    Mirei cried out as another laser blast hit her.  It didn't hurt much, but it took a large amount of energy to deflect it, and flying above the surface of Jurai there were no obstacles to keep the interceptors from hitting her.  There were three fast two-man fighters behind her which were angrily spitting laser fire.  She was knocked off her flight path by another hit and looking behind her she knew she'd have to disable them or soon they would overtake her.  She wished she could just surrender, return the sword, and make everything better, but struggling against Iyami's orders was futile.  Mirei stopped in midair, concentrated, and fired three blasts of energy at the fighters.  Each shot hit the engines, and they began to spiral out of control.  From two of them, the pilots ejection seats shot them free, but just as Mirei was breathing a sigh of relief, the third one exploded. 

    She felt like she had been punched in the stomach.  She was sure she had just hit the engine hard enough to knock it out and not damage the fighter too badly, but for some reason her hit had set off a chain reaction.  What had been the fighter was now just a cloud of smoke, and Mirei felt sick as she realized she had just killed two people.  She wanted to throw the sword away and just scream as loud as she could, but her orders boomed inside of her head.  Blinking back tears, she flew as fast as she could away from Jurai.

    When Mirei saw Iyami's dark, black ship in orbit of Futago she immediately felt even worse.  She was going to get new orders, she was sure, orders that she wouldn't be capable of disobeying. She had seen the looks on the faces of the guards in the palace-they were brave, determined, and were fighting to protect their home.  Iyami, Mirei thought, was nothing like that, but he was the one who had found her, not the noble guards of Jurai.  She wondered what the two men who had died had been like, if they had families or daughters her age waiting at home for them.  Tears streamed down her face as she wished she could kill herself, anything to stop more people from dying at her hands.  As she flew into the docking bay of Iyami's ship she shuddered.  She had already killed two innocent people, and it was probably only beginning.



    Iyami sat on the bridge of the ship and watched as the radar screen showed Mirei drawing closer.  Her return had to mean that she had the sword.  Now he could begin the real work, while the Jurai military scoured the system for it.  Iyami had made sure they would never find his ship, which was undetectable by any radar the Jurai military had.  It had been a classmate's graduate project, and Iyami had gladly stolen it.  Mirei wouldn't even be able to find him if he hadn't given her exact coordinates.  His dreams of ruling Jurai were interrupted by Namekuji walking onto the bridge.  Iyami didn't know this, but it wouldn't have surprised him that in every universe, Namekuji was equally stupid.

    "Morning, Mr. I!" Namekuji said cheerfully, walking across the bridge and knocking over a chair and its attached computer console.  The console sparked and made some alarming noises before flickering out and dying with a thin column of smoke rising from it.  "Sorry," Namekuji said, shuffling to the navigator's seat and sitting down, this time without knocking anything over.  From his captain's chair Iyami looked at him in shock.

    "You just blew up the weapons station!" Iyami finally yelled.

    "Wait," Namekuji said, getting up and nearly knocking the navigation station over, which caused Iyami to start out of his chair with a horrified look on his face.  Namekuji pulled a bottle of drinking water out of his pocket and dumped it on the smoking weapons console.  There was a sudden shower of sparks from the inside of the console, a huge puff of smoke, and then it went completely dead.  Namekuji pulled the chair and the fried console back upright, turned to Iyami and grinned.  "Right, no problem," he said, walking back to the navigator's seat.  Iyami was bright red.  He was too angry to think of something to yell.

    "You....you...." he started to say, the veins in his forehead throbbing.  Namekuji was humming the same note over and over, thinking he had solved the problem by putting out the fire.  Iyami opened his mouth wide to scream at Namekuji, but just then the doors to the bridge opened to show Mirei standing there holding the sword.  She was crying, but Iyami didn't notice.  As soon as he saw the sword he jumped out of his chair, ran over to her and grabbed the container holding the sword out of her hands.  He held it up above his head in triumph.

    "Yes!" Iyami yelled.  "Namekuji, is there a greater scientist than me anywhere in the galaxy??"

    "Well, Mr. I-"

    "No!" Iyami replied before Namekuji could answer.  "With this," he said, greedily eyeing the sword, "I will finally put an end to the Jurai and take what is rightfully mine!"

    "What's that, Mr. I?" Namekuji asked.

    "The universe, you blockhead!" Iyami yelled.  "And once the universe is mine-"

    "Please!" Mirei said with tears streaming down her face, interrupting him.  "Can I go?  I did what you wanted, I-"

    "What kind of ultimate weapon are you?" Iyami said back to her incredulously.  "Your job is to destroy things, and you don't even enjoy it-"

    "But I don't want to hurt anyone else!"

    "Well, I do," Iyami replied, sitting down in his captain's chair and adjusting his black robes.  "Go back to the cargo bay and await my instructions," he said, pressing a button on the remote control.  Mirei looked like she was going to open her mouth to protest, but when Iyami pressed the button her eyes got an empty look to them and she stopped.  She bowed silently, then turned and walked off of the bridge.

    "She didn't look very happy, Mr. I," Namekuji observed.  Iyami wasn't very happy either.  His moment of triumph and his ultimate weapon was crying like a schoolgirl.  Well, he thought, she was a schoolgirl but it was still no excuse.

    "Well, I'm happy," Iyami said unconvincingly, examining the sword more closely.  "Execute the flight plan to the canyon.  It's time to hide for a while so I can work on this."

    "Right," Namekuji said, still sitting there looking at Iyami.

    "Well?" Iyami asked.

    "What?"

    "Didn't I tell you to execute the flight plan?" Iyami asked impatiently.

    "Oh...that,"

    "Wait...don't tell me," Iyami said.  "You erased it."

    "They shouldn't put the 'erase' button right next to 'execute' Mr. I, it's very confusing-"

    "For a five year old, yes," he replied.  "Right, get out of here and I'll do it myself."

    "But-"

    "Go!" Iyami asked.

    "But there's one other-"

    "If you don't get off this bridge right now I'll have you loaded into a torpedo and shot into the sun," Iyami said menacingly.  Namekuji looked like he was going to say something but stopped, bowed, and then walked out of the bridge, almost knocking over the smoldering weapons console again as he left.  Iyami just shook his head as the doors to the bridge closed.  Of course, he thought, with the weapons console destroyed, he couldn't fire anything into the sun, but not surprisingly Namekuji hadn't figured that out.  Iyami smiled as he sat down at the navigation console.  Everything was going exactly according to plan.



    Washu flipped on the lights, and the dark space around her was transformed into what looked like an abandoned factory.  Equipment sat in piles in the corners, collecting dust, while what obviously had been the factory floor was now deserted.  It looked like the empty building they had found had once been used to make microprocessors of some kind, but the company had gone out of business.

    Washu had thought she had been very thorough in proving why travel between universes was impossible, but someone had pulled it off anyway.  Fortunately, she had the data for how they had gotten there, which she thought would make finding a way back relatively easy.  Washu looked around at the junk strewn across the factory floor, which looked like someone had thrown the mother of all parties on it.

    "It looks..." Washu started to say 'like Tenchi's living room after Ryoko and Ayeka had a fight', but she decided against it "...like it's perfect," she finished.  It definitely wasn't a clean room, at least not anymore, but she decided it would work for her purposes.  Washu walked over to the nearest computer bank and dusted it off.  She plugged one of the computer units in and it sprang to life, which surprised her.  Evidently no one had bothered to turn the power off yet, which was good news for her.  It looked like it might have only been a few weeks since the facility had been abandoned, so maybe the company that owned it had paid for the power in advance.  She didn't know.  She wished it were a weekend so she wouldn't have to worry about a real estate broker leading some client into her new lab, but there was nothing she could do about that.

    "I think I'll start getting my lab set up," Washu said, looking at the tired group around her.  "But tomorrow is going to be a long day, so you should probably get your rest now."  Ryoko yawned loudly.

    "That's a great idea," Ryoko said, turning to Tenchi.  "So are you ready for bed, Tenchi?" she whispered quietly in his ear.  Tenchi's face froze in panic.

    "Um...it looks like there are some sleeping bags in the corner over there," Tenchi said nervously, walking over to one that wasn't anywhere near the other ones.  Ryoko frowned.  Kiyone walked over to Washu.

    "Washu, if you need help, I wouldn't mind.  I'm not really tired yet," Kiyone lied.

    "Well, if you can give me a hand moving this over there-" Washu replied, motioning to a pile of equipment. 

    A half an hour later Washu had a pile of computers, most of which she had already taken halfway apart, sitting in the corner opposite where Tenchi, Ryoko, and Ryo-Ohki were sleeping.  The hum of electricity coursing through the machines made Washu feel like she was back in her lab again, and she was starting to catch her second wind.  Kiyone looked over Washu's shoulder and shook her head, marveling at how fast Washu could work.

    "You should get some rest too, Kiyone," Washu said, motioning to Tenchi and the others.  Kiyone looked over in the corner and saw everyone sleeping on top of their sleeping bags, because it was still pretty warm.

    "They look pretty comfortable," Kiyone observed.  Washu looked over at them and smiled.

    "Definitely," Washu said.  "It's good the rest of us here or Tenchi might not get off so easily," she added.  "Thanks for your help, Kiyone.  I'll be counting on you tomorrow, so be sure you get some rest."  Kiyone nodded at Washu.

    "I will," she replied.  With that, Washu turned back to her work.  She knew it would take all night just to create a reasonable facsimile of her lab back home.  And something told her they didn't have much time to waste.



    Iyami finished entering the coordinates to land his ship safely in a canyon on Futago and pressed the 'execute' button.  The ship's engines fired as it began its approach to Futago.  Iyami sat back smugly in the navigator's chair and looked out the window.  Futago was really a beautiful planet, and much less populated than Jurai.  Once he destroyed the Jurai royal family and took over the universe, Iyami thought, he might put his capital there.  Looking across the largest continent, he decided on a spot near the ocean, where he could build a huge statue of himself, looking out towards the vanquished planet of Jurai when it rose over the horizon.  He looked at the planet growing closer, and wondered what the tallest statue in the universe was, so he could make the one of himself twice as big.  The trick, he thought, would be building a deep enough foundation so it wouldn't fall over, but he was sure there was deep bedrock along the coast somewhere.  Futago now filled the window in front of him, and the outside of the ship...

    Iyami sat up abruptly.  The planet was getting closer way too fast.  The front of the ship was glowing red.  He looked around to yell at Namekuji, then he remembered he'd kicked him off the bridge.  Iyami slammed his fist down on the communicator button, which would allow him to broadcast a message throughout the ship.

    "Nameku-" Iyami stopped talking as out of the corner of his eye he saw something rolling across the floor of the bridge.  He looked away from Futago, down at the ground, and saw that the communicator button had snapped off when he'd pounded on it.

    "Damn!" Iyami yelled, frantically punching buttons on the navigator's console.  A number of displays came up, followed by a window with the message "general protection fault - press Ctrl-Alt-Del to reboot".  "Aaaarggh!" Iyami yelled as the nose of the ship turned an even brighter red and the planet loomed closer.  He pressed the keys to reboot and got the same message again, although now all the colors on the screen inverted.  The third time he did it every alarm on the ship went off at once.  Iyami winced and put his hands over his ears as klaxons blared throughout the ship.

    "R-R-Red alert," the computer's synthetic voice stuttered throughout the ship.  "Stand by for chocolate chicken casserole," it added, causing Iyami to look up at the ceiling with a baffled look on his face. 

    Iyami swore under his breath and pounded on the console.  It promptly shorted out and went black.  The ship began to rattle as it punched through the upper atmosphere fast enough to make a very big, very messy crater when it got to the ground.

    "Son of a-" Iyami started to say, looking around the room frantically for anything that could get them down alive.  On the wall of the bridge was a chair and a computer console labeled 'manual control.'  Iyami sprinted over to it and saw a red button behind glass for the manual override.  He quickly broke the glass, pressed the button, and a panel in the wall opened with a control yoke moving out from it.  Iyami grabbed the controls and turned left and the ship lurched to the left in a way that made him very glad he hadn't eaten recently.  He let go, and the controls re-centered, with the ship plummeting straight down.  He pulled back as hard as he could and the ship began pitching violently as it tried to pull up and right itself.  They were punching through the clouds now and as Iyami kept pulling up he could feel the ship returning to level flight.  The console read 30 degrees down, then 20, then 10...and then just as Iyami was starting to relax they came out of the clouds.  The whiteness surrounding them vanished and the ground appeared.  The problem was it appeared only ten feet in front of the ship.

    "Aaaaaaaaa!" Iyami screamed, and a split second later, the nose still pointing slightly down, they slammed into the ground.  Iyami was thrown from his seat halfway across the bridge, landing with a crash and then bouncing around as stars danced around his head and the ship made horrible screeching noises as it crashed through the trees.  Then, finally, everything was quiet, and Iyami slowly opened his eyes, half-expecting to be in hell.  He wasn't-somehow he was alive.

    "I made it!" he yelled, just as the navigation console fell over on him.  Cursing, he managed to crawl out from under it.  It was early morning, and looking out the shattered front window, Iyami could make out a small town in the distance.  He hoped no one had seen them crash, and then went off to find Namekuji so he could hit him in the face.



    Washu was awake and glued to the monitor she had set up, displaying the day's top headlines over Jurai's internet.  The early morning light filtering through the warehouse windows made everyone feel more awake, except for Washu, since she had been up all night.  She had done a pretty good job with the equipment she had, she told herself.

    "There!" Tenchi said, pointing to the top story "Tenchi sword stolen; 2 killed".  Washu clicked the link, and text scrolled across the screen.  She didn't even notice everyone else reading over her shoulder as she devoured the news.  The first part they already knew-background on the powers of the sword, which seemed the same here as it was back in their own universe.  Scrolling down and eliciting some grunts from people who hadn't finished that paragraph, Washu came to the next part of the story.  Apparently right after the theft, Jurai's military had sealed off the whole system-absolutely no one was getting in or out. There was a picture of the culprit from a security camera, and everyone gasped when they saw it.

    "What?" Kiyone asked.  "She stole the sword?" she said incredulously, looking at the scared-looking 12-year old girl in the picture.

    "She doesn't look happy about it," Washu said, leaning back in her chair, "and it says two people in the space force were killed, but I bet that wasn't deliberate."

    "Why do you say that?" Ryoko asked.

    "No one died on the ground," Washu said, pointing to the article, "but it says 85 people were 'injured'.  She probably just stunned them."

    "So do you think she's acting against her will?" Ryoko said.

    "Just look at the expression on her face," Washu replied.  "Besides, I think if this were her idea and she were truly out to get the sword for herself, she wouldn't have hesitated to kill all the guards in her path.  Why stun them?"

    "Less of a prison sentence if she's caught," Kiyone said.

    "Maybe," Washu replied.  "I think someone's using her."

    "Who?" Kiyone asked.

    "I think there's only one way to find out," Washu said.  "We're going to have to look for the sword the old-fashioned way."

    "What about getting home?" Ryoko asked.

    "This girl who stole the sword obviously has an enormous amount of power, to defeat the entire Jurai security system.  We can use her to--" Washu replied.

    "I could do that!  Why not just use me as the extra power source and get out of here?" Ryoko protested.  Washu sighed.

    "You can't do it without all the gems and your other gems are in the normal universe where we can't get to them.  Besides, the power source would have to stay here to provide a continuous source of power, so you wouldn't be able to return home with the rest of us.  Trust me, if we can somehow get this girl to help us she can provide the power, Tenchi's light-hawk wings will protect us inside the wormhole, and we can get out of here," Washu explained.

    "Can't you just scan for the sword and lead us right to her?" Ryoko asked.

    "No," Washu replied.  "And without a year to rebuild my lab, there's no way we could make a scan like that without drawing attention to ourselves.  This equipment is too primitive to detect the sword at more than a close distance."

    "Then...where do we start looking, Washu?" Tenchi asked anxiously.

    "Well, last night," she said nonchalantly, "I did manage to come up with a couple inventions."

    "What are they?" Kiyone asked.

    "First, portable scanners," Washu said, pulling out two small gray boxes about the size of Sony Walkmen.  "These will home in on the sword when you press the red button.  But do not press the button unless you think the sword is very near.  It only works for a range of a mile or so, and the battery only lasts five minutes."

    "What good is that, then?" Ryoko asked skeptically.

    "It's better than nothing," Washu snapped back.  "Now there are only two places the sword can be since the system's sealed off-either Jurai or Futago.  Ryoko and Tenchi, you two take Jurai.  Kiyone-you and Ryo-Ohki take Futago.  I'll stay here and see what I can do about getting us home."

    "What's the second invention?" Ryoko asked, turning one of the gray boxes over in her hands.

    "This," Washu said, pulling out two blue headbands.  "I'm sorry it's not orange, Kiyone," she said, "but this was all I could find here.  It looks like an ordinary headband, but it works as a telepathic transmitter allowing me to stay in touch with you and relay anything I find out."  Kiyone slipped off her headband and put on the blue one.

    "Like this?" she thought.

    "Um..." Washu replied nervously, "it doesn't quite work yet.  These units should be fine, but I have to get the base station's power up, which should only take another hour or so.  Once I get that fixed, I'll contact you to make sure it's working."  Ryoko put on the other headband.

    "We could have just used cell phones," Ryoko complained.  Washu ignored her.

    "OK, is everyone ready?" Washu asked.  "Whoever took the sword is probably going to use it for something, and my guess the thief isn't a good person."

    "Some thieves are good, right, Tenchi?" Ryoko said, putting her arm around him.  Tenchi sweatdropped.

    "And no fooling around," Washu said, as if she were reading Ryoko's mind.  "This is very important."

    "Washu, where do we start?  We don't have any leads, so-"  Tenchi started.

    "Bars," Ryoko replied.  "Someone in a bar somewhere will be in a mood to talk and they'll know something."

    "This seems like a bit of a longshot," Tenchi replied, scratching his head and wondering just how many bars were on Jurai.

    "I can't think of a better idea," Washu replied glumly.

    "Let's go, Tenchi," Ryoko said.  "Don't worry Washu, you can count on us!" she added.  Tenchi and Ryoko left the warehouse.

    "Kiyone," Washu said quietly.

    "What is it, Washu?" Kiyone replied in a whisper.

    "If you stole the sword where would you put your base of operations?  Jurai or Futago?" Washu asked.

    "Futago," Kiyone replied.  "I'd guess it has fewer people, probably fewer guards and police than Jurai itself."

    "I agree," Washu said.  "So be careful up there.  I'll call you as soon as I get the telepathic link working."

    "Understood," Kiyone said, nodding.  "Ryo-Ohki!" she called out to the cabbit.

    "Meow!" it replied enthusiastically.

    "Are you ready?" she asked.

    "Meow-ow!" Ryo-Ohki hopped up on Kiyone's shoulder.  Kiyone got the depressing feeling that this was going to be like looking for a needle in a haystack.  However, Kiyone thought, with Mihoshi safely in another universe anything was possible.



    Two hours later, Tenchi sat down next to Ryoko at the bar and wondered if there had ever been a more hopeless search.  He looked at Ryoko out of the corner of his eye as she asked the bartender for some sake.  She had downed one by herself at the first bar, she'd sweet-talked him into splitting one at the second bar, and now, to Tenchi's horror, he saw the bartender bring back two as Ryoko clapped her hands together in joy.

    "Drink up, Tenchi!" she said, giving him a kiss on the cheek that turned Tenchi bright red.

    "Um, Ryoko, shouldn't we stay focused on the-"

    "Tenchi," Ryoko interrupted, whispering in his ear, which didn't make him any less red.  "If we don't drink it'll look suspicious.  Trust me-all information is in a bar somewhere if you take the time to drink and ask about it with subtlety."

    "Well, I guess," Tenchi said, picking up the flask of sake in front of him and looking at it like it had a horse's head in it.

    "That's the spirit!" Ryoko said, clapping Tenchi on the back hard enough to almost knock him off of his barstool.  "I'll race you!"

    "Ryok-" Tenchi started, but before he could finish the word she was drinking.  Tenchi sighed, and downed the glass of sake.  He winced as the aftertaste hit, then shook his head.  "Ryoko, this doesn't seem to do anything," he said.  It was true, he didn't feel drunk.

    "Hmmm...maybe another," she said, a mischievous glint in her eye.

    "Ryoko!" Tenchi protested.  "I'm not even 20 yet and-"

    "Trust me," Ryoko said in a whisper, "people all around us are drinking.  If we don't they'll suspect."  Tenchi looked around the bar.  There were all of two other people in it, who seemed engrossed in watching a billiards game on TV and their drinks looked like they had been empty for a while.

    "Ryoko, I don't think-"

    "Bartender!" Ryoko called out.  "Two more sakes please!" 

    Tenchi still didn't feel anything, and was beginning to wonder why Ryoko liked sake so much.  It made sense, he thought, that she needed to drink a lot of it because it obviously wasn't very strong.  A crashing glass sound came from behind him, and Tenchi spun around in his chair.  Then he appreciated the power of sake.

    "Wow," Tenchi said as the room kept spinning, then lurched back to normal.

    "Another one, Tenchi?" Ryoko asked, looking over at him.

    "I think maybe we should ask about the sword now," Tenchi replied.  Ryoko shrugged.

    "Bartender!" she yelled.  "Have you heard anyone talking about that stolen sword?"

    "Nope," the bartender called back, sweeping up the broken glass from the mug he'd dropped.  Tenchi sweat-dropped.

    "That was subtle?" he asked Ryoko.

    "As close as I get to it," Ryoko replied.  "Next bar, Tenchi?" she asked, getting up and downing her second bottle of sake in what looked like one long gulp.  Tenchi stood up and felt a little woozy.

    "Sure," he replied.  Something told him it was going to be a long morning.



    Iyami walked through the town looking for anywhere that would make a useful lab.  He just needed some basic equipment and a little time, but so far all he'd come across were small convenience stores and shops selling souvenirs of the nearby canyon.  He had been thinking it was fortunate they crashed in a small town because there was less chance of their arrival being noticed, but now he wasn't so sure.  Iyami stopped and looked in the window of a store selling "I (heart) the Great Canyon of Futago" bumper stickers.

    "What kind of morons buy this crap?" Iyami asked aloud, shaking his head.

    "That might look good on your spaceship, Mr. I," Namekuji said, pointing to the bumper sticker.  "Look, you can get a little model of the canyon too-" he was cut off by Iyami whacking him on the head.

    "Will you stop looking at this junk and look for something useful?" he exclaimed.

    "Right," Namekuji said, somewhat resigned.

    "Mirei," Iyami said, turning to face her which made her go white as a sheet.  Please don't make me kill anyone else, she thought frantically as her stomach tied in a knot.  Iyami noticed her discomfort and sighed.  "Could you look more unhappy with your job?" he asked her rhetorically.  "Never mind, where is the largest consumer of power in this town?" he asked.  Mirei exhaled and scanned the horizon.

    "It's 100 meters that way.  The blue building on the right," she said nervously.  Iyami grinned.

    "Perfect.  Perfect!" he said, squinting to read the sign on the building.  "Something electronics," he read.  "That will do nicely.  Mirei, go ahead of us and quietly kill everyone in the building."  Her stomach did a somersault.

    "But-please, if I just knock them out it...it might be quieter," she insisted.  Iyami threw up his hands.

    "Whatever," he replied crossly.  "Just make sure they won't wake up for at least a day," he continued.  "And hurry-the sooner we get this working," he said, tapping the sword in its container under his cloak, "the better."  Mirei bowed to Iyami and quickly set off ahead of him in case he changed his mind.  Iyami shook his head.

    "If she only enjoyed destroying things," he said to Namekuji, "she would have a much happier future ahead of her."



    Kiyone sat at the controls of Ryo-Ohki and couldn't help having a smile creep across her face.  No wonder the Galaxy Police had never caught Ryoko, Kiyone thought.  Ryo-Ohki in spaceship form handled like a dream and accelerated with a speed that put Kiyone's own ship to shame.  Kiyone wondered whether it would be feasible to issue every Galaxy Police officer with a Ryo-Ohki equivalent-having a ship that was sentient seemed kind of strange, but criminals wouldn't stand a chance in chases. 

    Kiyone put Ryo-Ohki into orbit around Futago and looked at the computer screen in front of her for good landing sites. Kiyone's search for high power readings came up with only power stations and factories that seemed legitimate.  Where would Mirei, or whoever made her steal the sword, be hiding?  Kiyone had assumed some kind of huge base with top security and high power consumption, but the more she thought about it that wasn't necessarily true.  She needed to talk to Washu.  Kiyone put on the telepathy transmitter and hoped Washu (1) had it working by now and that (2) it wouldn't fry her brain.  Washu's experiments had a tendency to be somewhat less than perfect on the first try, occasionally failing in a spectacular fashion.

    "Washu?" Kiyone thought, feeling kind of stupid thinking at no one.

    "Hello?" Washu's voice came back in her head, loud enough to cause Kiyone to jump about a foot.

    "Can you turn that down a little?" Kiyone said back, talking out loud.

    "Meow?" Ryo-Ohki asked.

    "Sorry," Washu said at a much lower volume.  "Can you hear me OK?"

    "Perfectly," Kiyone replied.  "Why aren't we using normal communications channels again?"  Washu sighed on the other end.  Or thought about sighing, Kiyone guessed.

    "This is impossible to intercept.  Thoughts don't transmit with any decipherable pattern.  If whoever stole the sword is monitoring normal communications we don't want them to know we're after them," Washu replied.  Kiyone shrugged.  It made sense, she thought.

    "Of course it makes sense, I'm a genius," Washu replied matter-of-factly.  Kiyone grimaced.  Washu may be a genius, she thought, but her-Kiyone stopped her thought as she remembered Washu was listening in.

    "But what?" Washu thought back to her.

    "Never mind," Kiyone thought quickly.  "Can you patch me in to the flight records for Futago?"

    "What are you trying to find?" Washu asked.

    "The girl must have landed here recently with the sword.  How many ships arrived in the last twelve hours?" Kiyone asked.  Washu typed away.

    "3,215," Washu replied.  Kiyone gulped.  "We're lucky the last twelve hours were nighttime, or it would be even more," she continued.

    "The Jurai military lost track of Mirei somewhere outside of Jurai's orbit, right?" Kiyone asked.

    "True,"

    "So if I assume whoever's behind this is based on Futago, a ship would've had to have left here, flown to Jurai orbit, picked up Mirei and returned.  They probably wouldn't have wanted to land on Jurai or it would look suspicious," Kiyone thought.

    "Possibly," Washu thought back.  "And they would have to be in something small enough to avoid detection, so we can rule out commercial flights."  Washu entered a new query.  "Fifteen flight plans fit that description," Washu said.  Kiyone sighed.  Fifteen was a lot to check out.  Suddenly, a thought came to her.

    "Maybe we're looking at this the wrong way," Kiyone said, thinking about all the times Mihoshi had made things go wrong.  Perhaps, she thought, something had gone wrong for the criminal they were looking for.  "What about any strange incidents, anything at all, on Futago about the time a ship with Mirei on it would have gotten back there?"

    "Let's see," Washu said, running another query.  "Ah...assuming standard speed for a flight between planets...and five minutes to pick up Mirei after Jurai lost radar contact...they would arrive on Futago at...exactly the same time a strange light was seen in the sky over the Great Canyon of Futago.  There's a town nearby where people said they saw a streak of light like a crashing ship.  No wreckage yet, though."

    "Can you see any wreckage?  From spy satellites or something?" Kiyone asked.

    "Well, I'll have to break into Jurai's military satellite network..."

    "We probably don't have that much time-"

    "Done," Washu said.  "Zooming in...here we are.  Definitely a crash site, on the north side of the canyon.  No life signs aboard.  No energy reading.  There's a town five miles north, and zooming in...yes, there are tracks leading from the ship to the town.  I think we have a suspect."

    "Thank you, Washu!" Kiyone exclaimed, glad she had least had a small area to start from.  Kiyone wondered why the ship had crashed.  Well, she thought, the thief's bad luck was about to get much worse.  "I'm on my way.  Kiyone out," she said.

    "Good luck," Washu said, breaking the connection.  She took off her headset and looked at her invention with a smile.  Another perfect invention, she thought.  Maybe she hadn't invented inter-dimensional travel, but she was definitely smart enough to get them home.



    Kiyone concentrated as she maneuvered Ryo-Ohki over the surface of Futago.  She was following the contour of the land to avoid radar detection, and with Ryo-Ohki's speed and maneuverability, it was a piece of cake.  A ridge came into view that had the town on its other side, so Kiyone deftly set Ryo-Ohki down so she could transform back into cabbit form.  

    A minute later Kiyone, with Ryo-Ohki on her shoulder, was looking down at the town from the top of the ridge.  Looking through binoculars and scanning the town she counted four or five places that looked big enough to house a small lab like Washu's.

    "Ready?" Kiyone asked Ryo-Ohki.

    "Meow!" Ryo-Ohki called back.  Kiyone wished she could understand Ryo-Ohki's language, but unfortunately it seemed like Ryoko and Washu were the only ones who knew what she was saying.  To Kiyone it just sounded like she was meowing over and over, but Ryoko talked to Ryo-Ohki like she had intelligent conversations, and from what she had been able to decipher from Mihoshi's report Kiyone didn't doubt that Ryo-Ohki was highly intelligent.

    Kiyone started down the ridge towards the town.  The town was small, with maybe ten thousand people, and all around it was nothing but a few farms, fields, sand, and to the south the giant canyon.  Overhead, the sky was clear and blue and the desert sun beat down on them and made Kiyone wish she had brought some water along.

    She walked down into the town and pulled out the sword detection device Washu had given her.  Washu had said it only worked within a mile of the sword, but the town wasn't that big, so she figured that shouldn't be a problem.  She walked to the center of town, pulled out the device, and activated it.  It lit up, and an arrow pointed to the east.  With Ryo-Ohki clinging to her shoulder, Kiyone ran in the direction the device told her.  A couple passer-by looked at her funny as she ran, but she knew that with only five minutes of power for the device, she had to get to it quickly.  The arrow kept pointing east, until after a quarter mile it started changing direction.  Kiyone slowed to a walk and walked nonchalantly right by the warehouse Iyami, Namekuji, and Mirei were in.  The arrow was pointing directly at the warehouse.  Kiyone ducked behind the building across the street and put on the blue headband.

    "Washu," Kiyone thought, "I've found it."



    Tenchi was laughing hysterically as Ryoko tried to stack the sake bottles and once again knocked them all over.

    "You...are hopelessly drunk," Tenchi said, slurring his speech a little as he wagged his finger at Ryoko.  Tenchi was pretty damn buzzed himself, and quickly beginning to see what Ryoko saw in sake.  It wasn't even tasting bad anymore, although a nagging voice in the back of his head told him that was probably because he'd lost track of how much he'd drank.

    "I'm drunk!" Ryoko protested, pointing a finger at herself and raising an eyebrow.  "Your face couldn't be more red if you sat in the sun all day!"

    "My face!" Tenchi said loudly.  "You're the one with the red face!"

    "Didn't I tell you going to bars was a good idea?" Ryoko replied.  "We'll find out the sword any minute now," she slurred.

    "No we won't!" Tenchi replied.  "This is right up there with you blowing up my high school.  I could make a movie: 'Bad Ideas of Ryoko.'  Epsiode One: Ryoko gets drunk instead of finding the sword...two, Ryoko blows up a perfectly good school..."

    "What about 'Bad Ideas of Tenchi,'?" Ryoko replied, trying not to laugh.  "'Sure, I'll take care of the baby while you're gone, how hard can it be?' or 'Let's get lost in Dr. Clay's spaceship'"  Tenchi laughed.

    "At least I never summoned a monster that destroyed my aunt's house!  You should be insured for property damage, but there's no way anyone could ever afford it-"

    "More sake!" Ryoko yelled to the bartender, who could hear her fine without her yelling.

    "No more sake!" Tenchi said back to Ryoko, who was spinning around in space along with the rest of the bar.  "If we don't sober up we're never going to find the sword!"

    "It's not here, trust me, it's on Futago," Ryoko said, draining the last of the sake bottle in front of her.

    "You don't know that-"

    "Would you stay here if you stole it?  There have to be fewer guards on Futago, and I'd want to get off this planet as quickly as possible,"

    "So why did Washu-"

    "So I could get a drink!" Ryoko exclaimed, giving Tenchi a thumbs-up.  Tenchi sweatdropped.

    "This is not good...the sword is here, somewhere, we won't find it, some evil force will take over the universe, and it's all from getting drunk with a space pirate..."

    "Aren't I a cute space pirate, though, Tenchi?" Ryoko said, batting her eyelashes at him and pushing out her chest to be even more noticeable.  Tenchi, who was in mid-drink, spit it across the room and started laughing.  Ryoko looked crossly at him.

    "What's so funny?" she replied.  Tenchi was still laughing hysterically.

    "Wow..." Tenchi said inbetween laughs, "No, it's not that you're not cute, it's just the way you looked...batting your eyelashes...it just...was funny, that's all," he finished, smiling.  Ryoko beamed back at him and crushed him with a hug without warning, nearly knocking Tenchi off his barstool.

    "So you do think I'm cute!" Ryoko exclaimed.

    "Ryoko!  I'm going to-" Tenchi stammered as he somehow turned even brighter red, then finally lost his balance, which wasn't very good due to the sake anyway.  With a crash the barstool tipped over and Tenchi landed on the floor with Ryoko on top of him.

    "This is more comfortable, isn't it Tenchi?" Ryoko whispered in his ear.

    "Ryoko-" Tenchi started to protest when he heard a beeping noise.  He sat up with some effort and pulled the blue headband out of his pocket.  He looked at Ryoko.

    "What is it, Tenchi?" Ryoko asked.

    "Ryoko-chan....it's Washu-san," Tenchi said, looking nervous.

    "Ryoko-chan?" Ryoko asked, surprised.  Tenchi looked flustered.

    "I mean, Washu-chan...Ryoko-san, it's Washu-chan," Tenchi said quickly.  He put on the blue headband.  "Hello?" he thought.

    Washu nearly fell off her chair from the swimming sensation she got being liked telepathically to Tenchi.  She frowned at the readings on the screen in front of her.  Was her invention malfunctioning?, she wondered.

    "Hello-ooo...Washu-chan?" Tenchi called again.  Washu heard his speech slurring slightly and laughed to herself.  Ryoko had gotten him drunk after all.  Good job, she thought.

    "What's a good job?" Tenchi thought back.  "We...um...haven't quite found the sword yet."

    "Never mind," Washu replied.  "Just head back here and sober up."



    "Can you hear me?" Kiyone thought to Washu, as she crouched in the shadows of an alley across from the warehouse.

    "Kiyone?" Washu thought back.  "You found the sword?" she asked.

    "Yes, Washu," Kiyone replied.  "It's in a warehouse.  No signs of guards, but there might be heavy resistance once I get in there.  Is there any way you can kill the power to the building, on my signal?" Kiyone thought.  She expected to be outnumbered, but hoped whoever was guarding the sword wouldn't have night vision equipment.  As a prepared Galaxy Police officer should, Kiyone had a pair of night-vision glasses with her.  Unfortunately, she thought, her blaster was almost out of power.

    "Let me see," Washu thought.  "Yep...I'm in.  I can only take out the entire block, will that be OK?" she asked.  Kiyone shook her head in amazement.  Washu probably gave the GP computer people fits, she thought.

    "GP's system is easy to get into," Washu thought back.  "I can pull your personnel file if you're curious."  Kiyone assumed she had already done that.

    "That's OK.  I'll signal you in about thirty seconds.  Can you take the block out then?"

    "I'm ready to take it out whenever you say," Washu thought.  Kiyone stepped out of the shadows and began walking towards the warehouse.  She turned, as if she was just going to walk by it and began to sweat as she neared the door she was planning to go in through.  She pulled what looked like sunglasses out of her pocket and put them on.  She wished she had backup-well, backup other than Mihoshi-but she knew there wasn't time.  She hoped if she failed and was shot down at least Tenchi and Ryoko might have better luck.  Still, she had no intention of failing.

    "3...2...," Kiyone thought.  "1...now!" Kiyone almost said out loud as she drew parallel to the door.  The light from inside the warehouse dropped exactly on cue, Kiyone drew her blaster with lightening speed, painfully aware that she only had enough power left to stun a small squirrel, and kicked down the door.  She rushed into the blackness and dove along the wall away from the light from the smashed door.

    "Who's there?" she heard a voice say, and in the gloom she saw three figures in front of a machine hooked up to the sword.  She identified one as Mirei, sitting on a wooden box with her arms folded, looking directly at Kiyone in surprise.  Fortunately, she seemed to be the only one in the room who could see in the dark.  One of the other two had his hands in his pockets and was looking around aimlessly, while the second was standing directly in front of the machine and was fumbling in his right pocket for something.  Kiyone took careful aim and from the length of the warehouse, about a hundred feet away, fired at the second man, hitting his right arm, which immediately fell limp from the stun blast.  She looked down at the power indicator-empty.  She swore and started running towards the group.



    "Damn!  Mirei, kill whoever just came in! I need the controller...where is it..." Iyami said, fumbling in his pocket.  His right arm was useless, and he was reaching into his right coat pocket with his left arm to try and get out the controller, which was difficult to do, especially as his eyes were adapting to the near-darkness.  Mirei froze with fear, hoping he wouldn't get to it in time.  If he used the controller to order her to kill Kiyone, Mirei would have no choice but to obey.  Footsteps were getting closer, Iyami finally got his hand around it, pulled it out and flipped it over to the glowing start button, then moved his finger towards it and-

    "Aaargh!" Iyami yelled as Kiyone barreled into him, knocking him backwards into a bunch of equipment, which fell over with a crash.  Kiyone twisted his arm behind his back, and Iyami yelped as he dropped the controller from the pain.  He started to say something, then saw the blaster in his face.  "Um...I'm sure we can discuss-"

    "You're under arrest," Kiyone said, reaching over and picking up the controller while keeping the blaster trained on Iyami.  "Who are you?  And what does this do?" she said to Mirei, while Namekuji whistled.

    "M...my name is Mirei," Mirei said.  "That thing...controls me," she said, looking downward.  "You aren't going to ask me to kill anyone are you?" she asked, tears in her eyes.  Kiyone looked down at Iyami with disgust and wished she had more power in her blaster.

    "Bastard," she said venomously.  "I should kill you right now."

    "Um..." Iyami stuttered, turning white as a sheet.

    "How does this work?" Kiyone asked Mirei.  "I'm going to try to set you free."

    "No!" Iyami said.  "She's...a monster...this whole thing was her idea!"  Kiyone shook her head.

    "Doubtful," she replied.

    "Press the button, then give your command," Mirei said.

    "Mirei," Kiyone said, holding down the button, "you're free.  Destroy this device."  Mirei beamed as Kiyone tossed the controller across the room.  She held out her hands and a red ball formed, shooting across the room and blasting the controller into a million pieces.

    "Thank you," Mirei sobbed, running over and putting her arms around Kiyone.  Kiyone stood in front of Iyami, with her blaster still trained on him.

    "Congratulations!" Washu yelled in Kiyone's head, causing her to jump nearly a foot.

    "Damn it, Washu..." Kiyone thought back to her.  She had completely forgotten she still had the headband on.

    "That was a good job," Washu thought.

    "What do you want me to do with them?" Kiyone asked her.

    "Drop the other two off with the authorities and bring Mirei back here.  Then we should be able to get home.  I think," Washu thought.  Kiyone took off the headband.

    "Mirei," Kiyone said.  "Can you guard them for me?  Stun them if they try anything?"

    "S..Sure," Mirei said, wiping her eyes.  Kiyone put her blaster, which was out of power and useless anyway, back in its holster.  Iyami sighed and looked down at the ground.



    Tenchi's head was pounding.  He glanced over at Ryoko, and she looked a little green herself.  Sake was fun while he was drinking it, but he was convinced his first hangover would be his last.  Something told him there had been a lot of "last hangovers" in the history of the universe.  

    He was sitting in Washu's makeshift lab, waiting with everyone else for Washu to put the finishing touches on the equipment they all hoped would take them home.  Kiyone had dropped Iyami and Namekuji off with the Galaxy Police-with enough evidence to get them imprisoned until half the stars in the universe burned out.  Everything had worked out fine so far, Washu thought, but now all the pressure was on her.  She stepped back from her equipment and frowned at the computer screen.

    "Well-this should work fine," Washu said.  

    "What do you mean 'should'?" Ryoko asked.

    "Some of these readings are a little strange," Washu said, scratching her head.  "We made it here OK, though, so there's no reason why getting back should be hard..." she said, shrugging.

    "What do we need to do, Washu?" Tenchi said, standing up with some effort and wondering if the Light-Hawk Wings would work as well if he was hung over.

    "Mirei," Washu said, "when I give the word, you direct all the power you can to that target," Washu said, pointing to a funnel-shaped energy collector mounted on the wall.  "The rest of you," Washu said, motioning to Tenchi, Ryoko, and Kiyone, will stand with me in this circle," she said, pointing to a circle drawn in the middle of the room.  "Tenchi, you generate the light-hawk wings to protect us from the immense pressure in the wormhole."

    "But, Washu..." Tenchi said nervously, "what if I can't?"

    "Then we'll be crushed to one-millionth our normal thickness," Washu replied matter-of-factly, "so stop thinking like that.  Is everyone ready?"

    "Let's get it over with," Ryoko replied, walking towards the circle.

    "I'll give it everything I've got," Mirei said, beaming at them.  "I can't thank you enough for what you did for me."

    "You're welcome, Mirei," Kiyone replied, moving into the circle with Tenchi and Ryoko.  "Everything will be fine now."

    "I know," Mirei replied.  Her mind was spinning with the possibilities.  She had taken the sword back to Jurai once news of what had happened with Iyami got out, and the Jurai king had suggested she could stay there if she wanted.  She definitely wanted to-being around good people who didn't want to use her for her power was very appealing.

    "All right," Washu said, carrying a small box with a button on it, connected to her computer equipment with a string of cables.  "It's all set.  As soon as I press this button, we go."  Tenchi swallowed hard.

    "You can do it, Tenchi," Ryoko whispered in his ear, not helping his concentration.

    "Thanks," Tenchi replied.

    "Ready?" Washu asked, not waiting for an answer.  "Three...two...one...now!"

    Washu pressed the button and there was a blinding flash of light, then a feeling like the world was collapsing on them.  Almost reflexively, Tenchi formed the wings of the light hawk as the world around them vanished to a point.  Everything was dark for a moment, and Tenchi wondered if they were dead because he couldn't move or speak.  A moment later there was an explosion of light and sound, and the next thing he knew, he was slumped over the grass in his backyard, breathing hard.

    "Ryoko?" he said, looking around and seeing her lying on the grass along with Kiyone and Washu.

    "Ow..." Ryoko said, sitting up slowly.  "That didn't help my hangover at all," she grumbled.  Washu staggered up to her feet, along with Kiyone and Ryo-Ohki. Washu sighed with relief.  They had made it home, and from the position of the sun if the sky, it looked like no more than a couple minutes had passed since they left.  Kiyone looked at the house, and noticed the back sliding door wide open.

    "Washu, was that door open when we left?" Kiyone asked, pulling out her blaster, which was still empty.

    "I don't think so," Washu replied.  Suddenly everyone jumped as they heard a scream from the house.



    "Namekuji, you idiot!" Iyami yelled, clutching his hand and cursing under his breath.  "That sword's got some kind of anti-theft system on it," he said, blowing on his hand.

    "Sorry, Mr. I," Namekuji said.  Iyami wished he could make Namekuji hold the sword for an hour or two, but he couldn't think of a good way to do that.

    "Hmm....maybe if we can find rubber gloves or something we won't get electrocuted," Iyami said, staring at the sword.  "This has to be a powerful weapon, though, it can't be of Earth origin...and I've never seen gems like those before..."

    "Where can we get rubber gloves, Mr. I?" Namekuji asked.

    "Probably in the kitchen or something.  Let's go back downstairs," Iyami said, turning and walking out of Tenchi's room.



    Kiyone waited behind the couch, her blaster trained on the stairway.  She cursed herself another time for not bringing more ammunition with her, but there wasn't time for her to run back to her ship to get more.  Still, she thought, it was sloppy of her and she didn't like being sloppy.  She looked over at the closet that held Washu's lab and wondered what she had gone in there for.  She could hear voices talking upstairs, then footsteps.  Whoever was in the house was moving.  Kiyone saw Washu's lab door open, and started to motion for her to get back inside when Washu held up an extra blaster clip, gave Kiyone a thumbs-up, and tossed it to her.  Kiyone caught it and quickly swapped the new clip into her blaster, as Washu ducked back into her lab and closed the door.  Tenchi and Ryoko were waiting outside, so now it was just Kiyone in the living room, waiting as the footsteps drew closer to the stairs...at the top of the staircase Iyami and Namekuji came into view.  Not again, Kiyone thought.  They didn't look armed but Iyami had a hand in his pocket, and if whatever he used to transport them to the parallel universe was in there, she couldn't afford to give him a chance to use it.  She set her blaster to maximum stun, and jumped up from behind the couch.

    "You again-" Iyami started to say, startled by the Galaxy Policewoman appearing out of nowhere, but before he could finish his thought he was hit by a well-aimed blast of stun fire.  A second later Namekuji, too, dropped to the ground.

    "It's clear!" Kiyone called to the others, as she rushed up the stairs.  Iyami and Namekuji were out cold at the top of the staircase.  Kiyone almost wished she had waited until he started walking down so he could fall down the stairs, but it was too late to do that now.

    "Are you OK, Kiyone?" Tenchi said, as he rushed into the living room and Ryoko materialized next to Kiyone.  Washu walked out from her lab, stretched her arms and yawned.

    "I'm fine, thanks," Kiyone replied.  "I think these two need to get back to jail," she said, going through their pockets.  She picked up the black palm-sized device out of Iyami's pocket and looked at the flashing "Start" button.  "This must be it, Washu," she said as Washu walked up the stairs to get a better look.

    "Hmmm..." Washu said, taking the device from Kiyone.  The "Start" button vanished and was replaced by a command prompt and a small on-screen keyboard like the one in her lab.  "Interesting..." she said turning it over, "it seems to adapt its interface automatically for the person using it...impressive.  Kiyone, I'm going to take this to my lab.  I think you might want to leave this out of your report."

    "Why, Washu?" Kiyone asked.

    "If this thing really can teleport anyone anywhere it could destroy the balance of power in the galaxy.  Imagine a whole army teleporting from a hostile planet to the middle of GP headquarters, past all its defenses?  Or maybe someone could teleport the emperor of Jurai to the center of the sun?  I don't think anyone should know about this," Washu said.  Kiyone frowned and thought for a moment.

    "I don't like lying on my report, but I guess you're right," she said.  If word of the device leaked out of the Galaxy Police, Kiyone knew every criminal in the universe would descend on Earth to try to get their hands on it.

    "But Washu, how do we keep him from telling everyone about it?" Tenchi asked, pointing to Iyami.  Washu pulled a small box out of her pocket.

    "Memory erasing.  I can only erase the last twenty-four hours or so, but that should be enough.  He might remember picking up the device, but he won't know what it's for," Washu said.

    "Is lunch ready yet?" Nobuyuki's voice called from downstairs.

    "I don't smell any food," Yosho said, sounding disappointed.

    "I think today...we should eat out," Washu said.

    "Agreed," Ryoko added with an emphatic nod.

    "Who are those two?" Nobuyuki asked, pointing to Iyami and Namekuji.

    "Just some uninvited guests," Washu replied.  "Let's go eat."

    "I'll drive," Ryoko said with a gleam in her eye, dematerializing from the top of the stairs and materializing by the kitchen counter where the car keys were sitting.

    "Oh no..." Tenchi replied, remembering the last time Ryoko had tried to drive their car.  Yosho walked over to the counter and picked up the keys.

    "Maybe this time, you'll let an old man drive...it takes me back to my youth," Yosho said diplomatically.  Washu snickered, and Yosho turned to her with half a smile.  "Are you OK, Washu?"

    "Fine," Washu replied, placing the memory-erasing devices on Iyami's and Namekuji's foreheads.  "They're all yours, Kiyone."  Kiyone sighed.

    "That's the third time I've had to haul these two off to jail in two days," Kiyone said.

    "True, but one of those times wasn't in this universe," Washu pointed out.

    "Well," Kiyone replied, "I hope this time is the last."