DISCLAIMER: This story is based off of the Tenchi Muyo! anime series, produced by AIC and released by Pioneer Anime America. All characters from said series are the property of such. The characters Hikaru Moriyata, and any Argelians (which will be discussed in a later chapter) are the product of the imagination of Dennis Carr, and belong to same. The character Trakal, insofar as he is developed, is the intellectual property of Karmin St. Jean. The persons and many events in this fanfic are fictitious. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, or any event other than what has obviously happened, is a coincidence. Any military or police procedure outlined throughout the fic does not necessarily depict any real life procedure or scenario. Any similarity to real life procedure/scenarios is, again, coincidental. Tenchi Muyo: Unfinished Business A fanfic by Dennis Carr and Karmin St. Jean Interlude: Dreamscape It is a universally accepted fact that everybody dreams. Even you, the reader of this story, have dreams. Granted, you may not remember them, but it is generally accepted. Even if the research that states that we have dreams by pointing out the increased brain activity during certain cycles of sleep still can't actually get into your head and *show* what's going on - you're dreaming. Of course, we are keeping in mind that 56% of all statistics are made up on the spot. At this particular point, Trakal is still having the occasional nightmare.... --- "I'll get you," he gasped, "if it's the last thing I do!" Kain merely laughed, as he sent tendrils of himself through the now broken body of the draalthi. As Trakal died, he noticed what felt almost like anti-energy weaving through his body, tearing apart his organs, wrapping itself around his nerves and squeezing, causing neural short circuits through his entire body, and as he screamed one last time in anger at Kain, he felt one tendril in particular that wove up around - no, *through* - his cerebral cortex--. --- Trakal awoke with an anguished cry and sat up, the first thing he saw being the red glow of the digital alarm clock stating it was 4:30, and realizing that it was only a dream, tiredly fell back down, and after a moment of deciding that there would be no more sleep for the night, crawled out of the bed - but not before gently touching the face of his wife, who somehow managed to sleep through his scream. He fixed the blankets that were covering Tanaka and kissed her, softly enough so he wouldn't wake her. He stood there for a moment, smiling at her as she slept there, softly illuminated by the moonlight through their bedroom window. *She's so beautiful like that*, he thought to himself. The dream he awoke to was not recurring, thankfully, but he had similar dreams - the occurances thereunto pertaining being *very* infrequent. In the two years that he'd been married, it had only happened four times, and all of them were different - one was where he was pulled back with his wife, a draalthi, who was herself an operative; one was where Kain was, shall we say, significantly more perverse, and instead of killing him, anally raped him; and a couple of others, the nature of which he didn't remember - or for that matter, didn't really care to. One rather bizarre dream he specifically recalled involved him having children that were born in 1970, after he'd been pulled back by the Kain incident, having been drugged and forced into intercourse with a woman that "rescued" him from a nice yet senile veterinarian's office, and discovering that he had two motherless young adult children waiting for him in the time that he was *supposed* to be in. And for the first - nay, the second - time in his hitherto short life, he wondered if this were an alternate universe. Maybe he was supposed to have been torn apart by Kain, or otherwise injured. Maybe, just maybe, this would only happen in an alternate universe, if at all, he decided, as he quietly walked down the stairs, and recalled something he heard two years prior that ultimately stopped him from attacking Kain alone after he was thrown back in time. *It won't be an acceptable loss to Tanaka.* As he made his way into the kitchen, removed a bottle of juice from the fridge, and started some rice to cooking, he grudgingly figured that he was *probably* indebted to Ryoko for saying that. *The key word here,* he thought, *is grudgingly.* Over the past two years, he had learned to tolerate and respect the woman. Maybe not necessarily *like*, but there was definitely tolerance and respect for her, with maybe a hint of fear. If it came to sparring, she was quite a formidable opponent, and yet the only one she seemed willing to actually fight was Aeka. And on top of that, said fights were easily describeable as cat fights, since the fights were over what they both considered "theirs" - Tenchi. Trakal smiled a little as he recalled the fights, and decided he didn't miss the "game" he made of counting off the explosions. And as he poured a glass of juice, he decided that it was very pleasant around the house without the bickering.