ashu's Penitence

For Jordan

Tenchi Muyo! and all its trademark characters belong to Pioneer LDC and
AIC.

  Chapter 3: Forgiveness

'You may ask yourself "What is that beautiful house?"
You may ask yourself "Where does that highway go to?"
And you may ask yourself "Am I right? Am I wrong?"
And you may say to yourself "My God, what have I done..." '
- The Talking Heads

'When you're following an angel,
Does it mean you have to throw your body off a building?'
- They Might Be Giants

'I will never forgive that woman!'
- Princess Ayeka

**

The motion sensor camera unit swung in Washu's direction as she faded
into the laboratory. It was mounted over several relays and pipes that
were high above her on a throne of thorny circuits, casually surveying
every sector of the lab in case of discrepant movements that disagreed
with the layout of the laboratory. There were thousands of similar
cameras dispersed about the place, for it took that many to observe a
lab the size of a small solar system, but this was the only one that
could keep a watch on the red head scientist. Its lens glistened
intently, whirring and buzzing as it zoomed in on the back of her head.
She was quivering, it noted.

Washu leaned over a pile of discs, scowling at her rippled reflection
within each of them as she searched for the precise one she wanted. Her
arms were a blur of careless rage, and it didn't take too long for her
to find the disc labelled 'Personality Profile: Jerry'.

After she had spent enough time with Jerry, she had sat down at her
console and logged every pro and con, every subtle nuance to his being,
every beautiful characteristic he held in his heart. She didn't
exactly know why she had done this, but she knew that it would one day
come in handy. Maybe just to remember him by, or maybe even to perform
simulated conversations with an artificial Jerry.

This was indeed what she had in mind right now, as she stuffed the disc
inside one of the driver outlets that protruded from the simulation
chamber to her immediate left. She watched as the entire chamber filled
with an ultraviolet glow, absorbing the information and converting it
into stored, ready-to-read data. At this point, Washu would usually feel
proud of her achievement and skip about happily as the melodic chimes of
the simulation chamber's databanks filled with new readings.

"But this is just another lie," Washu whimpered, pressing a hand to
the cold, spherical surface of the chamber. "One I can't even tell
him, because it's so lowly and terrible,"

She asked herself why she couldn't tell Jerry the truth. Why
couldn't she just let him know that she was an alien being of over
twenty thousand years of age, one with such incredible intellect that no
human being alive could compare to her.

"Who am I kidding?" she laughed, wiping her nose as she frantically
keyed in numbers and security codes to ready the simulation chamber.
"I'm probably the stupidest person on the whole planet, if I thought
I had to lie to him,"

So she was going to get some answers. Despite the fact that it would
probably be more practical to tell Jerry face to face about her true
identity, she still couldn't bring herself to do it. If Jerry were to
laugh, or cry, or reject her for lying to him, or even if he rejected
her for telling him a truth he just couldn't accept as reality. she
wouldn't be able to bear it. Instead, she thought, she could just use
this artificial personality to gage what his definitive reaction would
be if she were to reveal her true origin, via the use of simulation.
That way, if he were to respond with open arms and a welcome twinkle in
his eyes, she knew that it would be just a matter of recording the words
she used and relaying them to the real Jerry and hoping her
simulation's accuracy was adequate. However, if he were to turn away
scornfully, she knew that she would have to.

"I would have to forget him," she cried, turning from the simulation
chamber and grasping hold of the edge of a desk to keep her world from
spinning wildly from its axis of normality. The concept of forgetting
him, and letting him meld with all the other lost memories she had
wedged in the back of her mind, petrified her. She could hardly move,
and when feeling finally came back into her legs she would have slowly
walked away from the simulation chamber, never to let this experiment of
emotions come to pass, letting the love slip out from under her. If it
weren't for the tinny, feminine voice of the computer system reaching
her ears from every corner of the lab, this would probably have come to
pass.

"Simulation chamber already in use," it spoke. "Your simulated
meeting with synthetic personality subject 'Jerry' will be stored
for future use,"

"Huh?" Washu said, completely forgetting her internal torment for a
second. "Computer, say again?"

"Simulation chamber already in use," the computer responded. "Your
simulated-."

"The simulation chamber isn't being used, computer," Washu
replied, warily. She stared at the closed, interlocking doors of the
chamber. "Is it.?"

"Simulation chamber already in use," the computer repeated.

"Knock it off!" grunted Washu, slamming her fist into the circular
button beside the entrance to the chamber. The doors opened before
Washu, but she couldn't make out anything within the chamber for all
the steam and bright lights that signified the chamber was indeed being
used. "Computer, identify user of simulation,"

"Simulation is being used by Ryoko," the voice replied. "Current
duration of simulation is nine hours, forty seven minutes and seven
seconds,"

"What?" Washu asked, shocked. She rushed into the centre of the
chamber and looked down at the coffin shaped table, upon which lay her
daughter. On her face were the virtual reality goggles that Washu had
designed herself, and to Washu's surprise Ryoko had them working
perfectly. "That's odd. Computer, how did Ryoko manage to get the
simulation chamber working without the proper codes?"

"Unknown," the computer replied, the voice now emanating from the
speakers inside the chamber. "No codes have been entered since your
last routine simulation,"

"The rabbit thing, right?" Washu asked.

"Affirmative," it replied.

"So, if no codes were entered," she began, placing a finger on the
goggles, through which she could see Ryoko's faded, lifeless eyes.
"How exactly did she get the simulation chamber working?"

"Simulation chamber was activated yesterday at twenty hundred hours,"
said the computer.

"Who activated it?" asked Washu.

"Not enough data available," the computer stated.

"Oh boy, this is gonna take some looking into," Washu groaned,
wiping her brow. She decided it would be best to get Ryoko out of the
simulation as soon as possible. After all, nine hours without food or
water must've been a little hard on the poor girl. "Okay, computer,
end simulation,"

"Access to simulation denied," the computer replied.

".Excuse me?" Washu blinked. "Computer, I just entered the
codes. End the simulation, that's an order,"

"Access to simulation denied," the computer said, once more. "Any
further attempts to disrupt simulation will result in termination of
your security clearance in this laboratory. You have been warned,"

"What the Hell?" gasped Washu, looking around. She couldn't
believe what she was hearing. Was her own lab really turning on her?
"Computer, show me the simulation that Ryoko's undergoing,"

"Displaying simulation on monitor zero," the computer said, as one
of the many monitors flickered into life. On the screen, it displayed
Ryoko lying beside Tenchi in an exact replica of the Masaki house's
living room. The sunlight crossed unnaturally across their naked forms,
highlighting every inch of their bodies with an eerie precision.

"That girl," Washu sighed, placing a hand over her forehead.
"Listen, Computer, prepare the Beta connection. I'm going to head
inside the simulation and get her to come out,"

"I wouldn't try that if I were you," a familiar voice warned. It
was the voice she had heard on the other end of the phone in her
nightmare, and it was coming from the speaker system.

"Who's there?" Washu demanded as she turned around, expecting to
see someone at the controls of the simulation chamber like some
curtain-veiled grand wizard.

"If you wish your daughter to remain safe, you'll leave her exactly
where she is," the voice snarled. It sounded so full of hate that
Washu felt weakened by the reverberating chords of speech that were made
louder by the sheer multitude of speakers about the lab. "I don't
think you want to be responsible for yet another tragedy, do you?"

"You bastard," said Washu, standing over Ryoko protectively.
"Computer, locate the source of that voice,"

"Heh-heh-heh," the hateful voice laughed. "I'm afraid it's not
going to be that easy,"

"Why are you doing this?" asked Washu, wishing that releasing Ryoko
from the simulation was just a question of prising the goggles from her
face. Unfortunately, if she did that then Ryoko would probably lose her
hold on reality and suffer severe, irreparable brain damage.

"If you really wanted to know, you would be able to remember me,"
the voice replied. It sounded strangely familiar to Washu, and her
curiosity became intertwined with her fear for Ryoko's safety.
"Since you obviously can't, I guess your daughter's life is not of
much concern to you,"

"What are you doing to her, anyway?" Washu asked.

"Just giving her the life she always wanted," it replied. "A life
without you. You see, in my world she doesn't have to worry about ever
being heart- broken or alone. Those were the only feelings that you ever
gave to her, you were just an annoyance. But not any longer,"

"What do you mean, your world?" Washu asked, though she didn't
expect to get a straight answer for that question either. "Tell me who
you are!"

But along with the vision of Ryoko's projected fantasies, the voice
faded out with a long, evil cackle. This was getting too confusing for
Washu, all she had wanted was to enact a fictional conversation and then
make it reality. Now she had learned of some unknown tyrant that had his
clutches on Ryoko, and with every complication that set in, Washu was
given yet another question to ask herself. But the one question she was
able to answer restored her hope, and she set off from the simulation
chamber and began to climb the staircase that led outside her lab.

"I'm gonna get my daughter back", she told herself. "If it's
the last thing I-. whoa!"

In her haste she tripped on one of the elongated steps, and before she
could levitate her way out of her predicament, she knocked her head
against the steel railing and slumped unconscious to the floor.

Her last musings before her stream of thought carried her away on a wave
of remembrance, were that she wished that in her infinite wisdom she
might have Careless Mother-proofed the staircase.

**

"I'm late! I can't believe it, I'm late!" the short, brown
haired boy rushed through the student filled corridors of the Imperial
Science Academy of Jurai. His uniform was a mess and his face flustered,
as he skimmed across the marble floor with a purpose. Under his arm, he
carried a hastily packed briefcase with scraps of paper hanging out of
it. Every so often a student would get in his way, and he would shove
them with the briefcase as he drove through the throngs with abandon.
"Out of my way, I'm late, damn it!"

He scurried under, through, between, and sometimes even over the other
members of the Science Academy, never once stopping to look behind at
the people he occasionally rammed into. It wasn't until he rounded a
corner and dove through the grand, golden archway that led into the
Science Academy's research and development section that he stopped
dead in his tracks. This was because he'd been bowled off his feet by
running straight into the back of a student who wasn't looking where
they were going.

"Hey, why don't you-." he began, rubbing his head and frowning
at the fellow member of the Science Academy's tuition program. It
wasn't long before that frown was replaced by a look of sheer,
unbridled awe.

Her hair was scarlet, like cherry blossom contrasted against a deep,
darkening sunset. It unfurled from her head like a bush or flower that
had been let to grow in its own unique fashion, billowing out behind her
and almost touching the floor so that it looked like her very own cloak
of fire. It sprung from around her face and took an almost
crustacean-like shape, complimenting perfectly the dazzling
incandescence of her eyes and flesh. She brushed the hair from across
her face, revealing it to be a buxom cliff down from which descended the
petite waterfall of her fringe, and embedded in its peach surface were
two precious emerald eyes and a vivacious smile. Bending down to look at
him closely, he saw her figure was that of a goddess, curving
angelically about her chest and hips with a seductive purity. Her
uniform almost shaped itself to fit her physique, rolling across her
bosom like a valley of shaded glory. Her legs, wrapped in tights, slid
smoothly across each other as she floated down from her cloud in the
heavens he had seen so vividly a moment ago.

"You should try to be more careful," she said to him, her voice as
fresh as he imagined the smell of cultivated land on some agricultural
planetary system would probably be. She got up from the floating cushion
she had been studying on, and began to pick up the work that had spilled
from his briefcase when they had so fatefully collided. "It's not
wise to run around a crowded place like that, y'know,"

"Wha. whuh. where. who." the boy stuttered, comically.

"My name's Washu, if that's what you're asking," Washu said,
noticing his apparent fixation with her body. She chuckled and patted
him on the head with his now full briefcase. Pointing to the nameplate
on it, she continued to speak cheerfully. "And I guess yours is."

"Marihito," he said.

"Right," Washu smirked, putting the briefcase in his hands for him.
"Nice to meet you, Marihito. Now, where were you in such a rush to get
to?"

"Uh," Marihito began, getting to his feet in an attempt to retain
what was left of his composure. "I was just on my way to hand in my
studies for higher level astronomy research,"

"Oh really?" asked Washu, raising an eyebrow at him. He pushed his
cute glasses back on the bridge of his nose and nodded at her. She
noticed he had an ever so slight overbite, which he was trying way too
hard to hide from her. "I thought that stuff was supposed to be handed
in last quarter,"

"I know," Marihito replied. He started off past her. "That's why
I'm in a hurry, I just hope they'll accept late entries!"

"Hey," she called after him, causing Marihito to turn around.
Winking at him, she took the briefcase from him and stuffed it behind
her back. "Heh, why don't you let me hand it in for you?"

"Huh?" Marihito blushed. He tried to take the briefcase back but
found himself unable to do so, as Washu kept spinning herself around so
that he couldn't quite reach it. "I don't know. it'd probably
be better if I were to hand my own work in,"

"It's alright," Washu explained, backing into her floating cushion
and placing the suitcase on it. Then, she sat down on the briefcase and
dared Marihito to try and take it from there. He decided against it,
bashfully. "I'm close to all the teachers in that department, so
I'm sure they'd accept late entries from one of my friends,"

"One of your.?" Marihito gulped, as Washu nimbly zipped around
behind him and gave him a Imperial Science Academy sized wedgie.

"Friends, silly," she snickered, as he felt the breath from her
nostrils on the back of his neck. He felt faint as he watched her float
off in the direction of the administration building, and once more he
collapsed to the floor in a heap.

"So beautiful," he repeated to himself. "So beautiful."

**

"Could you explain that last part of the plan to me one more time,
Washu?" Mihoshi said, as the others gathered around the genius
scientist. "I'm not sure I understand what you're saying,"

"Mihoshi," Kiyone grunted, turning to her blonde companion. "She
hasn't told us her plan yet, she just told us to gather around her,"

"That's it? Oh, how silly of me," giggled Mihoshi, as she
continued to just stand in the corner of the living room.

"Mihoshi!" Kiyone snapped.

"Waaah!" Mihoshi stumbled forward and stood beside Sasami.

They had all been enjoying an early morning breakfast when Washu had
surprised them all by appearing on the dining room table (especially
Ryo- ohki, who was so shocked by Washu's sudden appearance that she
swallowed not only her share of food, but both Ayeka and Kiyone's
too!). Taking advantage of their stupefied silence, Washu had crammed
into their brains exactly what she had just experienced in her subspace
laboratory. She had then informed them, after taking her feet out of
Sasami's carefully prepared soup bowl, that they must take swift
action based on these previous events.

"Miss Washu," Ayeka butted in, as she picked a soaked cabbit out of
her vegetable soup. "What you're telling us is that Ryoko has gotten
herself into trouble, again, and we have to go save her?"

"Right!" Washu cooed as she patted Ayeka on the hand with mock
condescension. "Someone call the press, we have a contender for my
position as greatest genius in the galaxy,"

"You say she's stuck in your simulation computer," Ayeka
continued, snatching her hand away from Washu. "Can't you just
figure out a way to get her out of there? It is your machine, after
all,"

"She's right, Washu," said Kiyone. "Wouldn't you have
accommodated for a situation like this when you designed it?"

"If only it were that simple," Washu replied, trying to remember
just when she designed the simulation chamber. "But I'm afraid
whoever is behind this has far more power over Ryoko and her mind than I
have on the simulation chamber, as long as she's stuck in the
simulation. If I were to attempt to remove her manually, then this
person could easily slice her brain in two like a melon as I tried to
separate reality from Ryoko's fantasy,"

"Mmmm, melon," Mihoshi drooled as she checked the breakfast
arrangement, only to be disappointed.

"Little Washu," said Tenchi, standing forward. She noticed he had
the Light- Hawk Sword at his side, ready for combat. "Do you have any
idea who it is we're dealing with?"

"None whatsoever," Washu replied. The images of the boy from the
memories she'd experienced after her fall down the stairs flashed
through her mind once again, but until she had reason to believe that a
kid from the Science Academy was behind all this, she decided to refrain
from mentioning it. "All I know is they somehow have control over the
simulations Ryoko experiences. This means he probably has control over
her thought process, too, so even if she starts to notice something
strange about the world she now inhabits, he can just rearrange things
so that she forgets about it almost immediately,"

"How are we going to help her, Washu?" Sasami asked, with Ryo-ohki
miaowing right along with her.

"Well, she's trapped in a simulation," Washu explained. "The
best way to bring her out would be to enter the simulation ourselves and
rescue her from the inside,"

"Enter a simulation controlled by an evil entity we don't know
anything about?" Ayeka gasped. "That's absurd. If he can force
Ryoko to believe she's living in the real world, what's to stop him
from affecting us the same way? We could end up living there for the
rest of our lives, all of us under his control,"

"Don't worry," said Washu. "He can control Ryoko's thoughts
because she's hooked up to the main network. It's her thoughts that
shape the world around her; she's kind of a God in that world. The
connection from the person controlling her from within is made directly
into her brain, but if we were to join the simulation simply as
'observers' we wouldn't be under his control, we would only be
taking part in the world that Ryoko herself was creating. It's like
when you play a video game, and you can see the sprites on the screen,
and you can control them at your leisure. You don't feel what the
sprite feels, and you can turn off the video game at any time. But the
game itself, or in our case Ryoko's mind, is governed by the rules and
regulations that have been programmed into the computer. Do you
understand now?"

"Um, sorta," Sasami blinked.

"Miaow.?" Ryo-ohki squeaked.

"I get it!" Mihoshi applauded. "Melons are like video games
because they're. fun,"

"Just as long as we don't have to dress up in plumber outfits and
jump on the heads of giant turtles," Ayeka said. "I'm game,"

"Does it matter if I were to kill Mihoshi in the simulation?" Kiyone
asked. "I mean, it's not like it'd be for real or anything.
it's just something I've always wanted to do,"

"When do we start, Washu?" said Tenchi, bowing before the little genius.

"Man, I just love your enthusiasm, guys!" Washu chuckled. "Well, I
guess there's no reason to wait, let's go!"

The phone started to ring.

"I'll get it!" Mihoshi exclaimed, diving out of the dining room
and into the front hallway. Soon after, the phone stopped ringing and
the sounds of Mihoshi's cheerful babbling resounded through their side
of the house.

"While Mihoshi's getting rid of whoever that is," said Washu.
"We can all get set up in my lab, ready for our intrepid seek and
rescue mission!"

"Right," Tenchi nodded as the others stood beside him, all of them
waiting on Washu's every word.

"So, let's get cracking, troops!" Washu declared.

"Washu!" Mihoshi called from the other room. "There's a
telephone call for you,"

"A telephone call.?" Washu asked, but she knew who it was. She
turned to Tenchi. "Listen, gather everyone together in the lab. I'll
be down in a minute,"

"Alright," Tenchi said, beckoning the others to follow him as he
left in the direction of the entrance to Washu's lab.

"Hello?" said Washu, picking up the phone. She knew who it would be,
and she almost felt tempted to just put the phone down. But she knew
that was wrong, and no matter how strongly she felt that she didn't
deserve to love him, he had the right to talk to her if he wanted to.

"Hi, Washu," Jerry said. His voice sounded further away than usual,
and Washu had to strain to hear him. "I need to talk to you,"

"Listen," Washu replied. "I'm sorry for walking out on you like
that. It was rude, I know, but. look, something's come up and.
agh, it's gonna sound like I'm making excuses just so I can avoid
you. but I can't talk right now,"

"It's urgent," Jerry said. He sounded like he meant it. "A
matter of life or death,"

"Well, so is this," Washu sighed. Right now would have been the
perfect moment to let him know the truth, that some being had abducted
her daughter, an intergalactic space pirate, and that if she didn't go
now then Ryoko's mind might be taken from her. But there wasn't
enough time, and the right way to tell him certainly wasn't over the
phone. "I'll call you back, okay? Just. give me an hour,"

"I can't," Jerry sounded like he was hanging onto the edge of his
sanity for dear life. "I really can't, Washu. I need to speak to
you, in person. right now,"

"Jerry," Washu said. "I swear I can't. And it's not because I
don't want to. I do, believe me. There are just more important things
going on right now-."

The line went dead.

"Goddamn it," Washu cursed, dropping the phone and watching it hang
lifelessly over the floor. She shook her head and hobbled over to the
laboratory entrance, praying that Jerry could wait long enough for them
to save Ryoko.

**

"Oh boy, I can't wait!" a student with offensively colored
luminous green hair sprang up from his seat and waved a concealed object
in the air for everyone to see. Wrapped in a white cloth, it was
impossible to judge exactly what his invention was and what purpose it
served. "When those judges get a look at this baby, BAM! They're
gonna award me first prize!"

It had been cold all day in the large waiting hall, for a great number
of the Imperial Science Academy's air conditioning systems had been
shut down due to an abnormal blackout of unknown origin in sector G4.
Class sessions and lectures had proceeded as scheduled, however, and so
had the annual invention contest. From all around the galaxy, students
and professors alike were allowed to witness the very best creators of
useful tools and machines displaying their finest work to date. A panel
of judges chosen individually from the highest ranks of Jurai's
science institute, would declare the winner to be the one whose
invention was most beneficial to Jurai's various social circles.

"Hey, Washu," said Ken Ichico, a greasy haired, male student in his
early twenties that Washu had an ongoing pseudo-friendship with that
consisted of overly flirtatious comments and behavior. She might have
found him attractive if he'd been less of an asshole. Much less.
"Wanna try out my invention?"

"Gee, I dunno," Washu smiled, sprightly nibbling on the blunt end of
her pencil. She glanced over at him through heavy eyelids, for she'd
been up all night working on her own entry into the contest. At first
she'd decided she was going to invent a cheap, efficient cure for the
common cold. Then, once she'd heard that one of the other contestants
was entering that already, she decided she would create a vaccine for
all the side effects that based on her research she had deduced any
cheap, efficient cure for the common cold would undoubtedly activate in
the human body. And boy, were there a lot of them. "What's it do?"

"All you gotta do," Ken said, leaning closer. He didn't seem to
notice the dozens of other students all milling about them. "Is slide
my cylindrical stimulator into your receptor, and then you'll know
exactly why I always come out on top in this contest,"

"Ken, I'm a scientist, not a nerd," Washu rolled her eyes.
"Besides, you've come last in this contest three years in a row,"

"That's what I'm saying," Ken grinned. "You always come before I
do,"

"You're sick," she groaned, poking him with her pencil.

"You love it," he snickered.

"No, she doesn't," a familiar voice interjected. Washu looked over
at Marihito, who was stood in front of a table length white sheet that
no doubt covered his own entry.

Ever since they'd met, Washu and Marihito had gotten along reasonably
well. Marihito tended to be a little too protective of her when it came
to guys, though, despite the fact that he showed Washu no real sign of
romantic intentions. He'd never even asked her out on a date, let
alone flirted with her as openly as a guy like Ken. Still, for the past
three and a half years he'd treated her almost like his girlfriend in
some respect. He always tried to have some say in her love life, which
was far more vibrant than he could have possibly known about.

"Oh, hey, it's the loser," Ken pointed at Marihito. It was an
annual rib that Ken and the other students had at every one of these
contests. For no matter how hard he tried, Marihito always seemed to
come in second place. He'd been in the Imperial Science Academy for
over three years; and three times he'd been the runner up. Washu
admired his efforts, to keep coming back and try time after time to rise
above that bar he seemed to have set for himself. But every time, he
came in second. "Ready to lose again, loser?"

"Cut it out, Ken," Washu smiled and nudged him in the ribs, much to
Marihito's dismay. He didn't like her casual flirting, and he
certainly didn't like her aggressive flirting. "I think he might win
this time,"

"Sure you do," said Ken. "But of course, if he did, that would
mean you'd lose for a change,"

Marihito always came in second. Second, that is, to Washu's
inventions. Perhaps that was why he kept trying, maybe he felt the only
way to get his courage up to be truly romantic with her was to be able
to beat her at her own game; science. She probably should have told him
he just wasn't her type, but he seemed happy being a close friend. If
only he didn't try so darn hard to be more than that without actually
making a move.

"Ken," Washu sighed.

"Can't you see you're bugging her?" Marihito frowned, grabbing
Washu by the hand and pulling her away from the keen student.

"Marihito," grunted Washu. She was amused by this apparent tug of
war over her attention.

"Leave her alone," said Marihito. He shot an icy glare at Ken, who
threw up his arms in forced terror.

"Whatever man," Ken laughed, moving over to another corner of the
room filled with females that he also frequently flirted with.
"What's up, ladies? Any of you lucky girls feel like blinding me
with science?"

"He's so immature," Marihito muttered. "He shouldn't be
treating you like that,"

"Hmm," said Washu, wondering exactly how she was supposed to be
treated in Marihito's view.

Marihito hadn't really grown all that much since she'd first met
him. He still stood just over five feet tall, unless you counted the
massive plume of hair he'd grown on his head. Washu thought he'd let
it grow so much simply to mimic her own hairstyle, but he claimed he
just couldn't be bothered cutting it. Still, at times she felt like
she was looking in a twisted mirror, in more ways than one. He'd
follow her around, take the same classes as she would and agree
constantly with everything she said. it was a major turn-off. His eyes
had grown weary of carrying her reflection, and beneath them had grown
crinkled bags of sleeplessness. Over the years his body had grown thin,
and his skin pale, almost as if he were slowly shrinking. Otherwise, he
seemed quite healthy, and really came to life when she was around. That
was the only thing stopping her from flat out letting him know that she
didn't think his bloated crush on her was a good thing, the fact that
he lit up and seemed to be a bundle of joy when they were close. It was
so cute, she thought. Besides, with so many guys gunning for her
attention merely to get inside her pants, it was a refreshing change to
have one that respected her opinions and listened to her.

"It'll be a piece of cake," she winked at him. "You'll win for
sure,"

"Huh?" he asked, turning to her. "Win.?"

"The contest, you nut," she smiled. Maybe he didn't listen to her
as often as she thought, she chuckled to herself. "The one we're all
here waiting for? The thing you based your entire schedule around this
term?"

"Oh," Marihito nodded. "Right. Yeah, maybe,"

"Why the indecision?" she asked, poking him in the face with her
pencil. "C'mon, you told me you put your best effort into it. I know
you're a genius, just like me,"

"I'm not that smart," Marihito blushed, snatching the pencil out
of her hand.

"Yuh-huh," Washu cooed. "Who achieved full honors at last year's
examinations, hmm?"

"Washu, that was you," he replied.

"Exactly! And you were smart enough to remember that!" Washu
exclaimed as she wound him up.

"Heh," said Marihito. Washu noticed he was even trying to stand in
the same position as her. She shook her head and tickled him
ferociously, forcing him to break down into laughter and lose his
placidity. "Hey!"

At this point in her life, Marihito was probably the only guy she knew
whose relationship with her was entirely non-sexual in every respect.
She regarded her own sexuality and attractiveness with amusement, though
she felt a great need to control it. Sure, she flaunted it a little, but
the guys she did end up sleeping with were ones she felt she could
trust; they were always the ones she loved. It may have appeared to be
irresponsible to some, but Washu found that those people tended to be
uptight and lacking in the sex department themselves. Her behavior was
less sluttish than it was lively. Marihito, however, believed that she
was still as much as virgin as he was. Since her sex life wasn't
something she'd want to discuss in public, she let him go on believing
that. After all, if he did find out, she felt he might try to imitate
what she had done and end up getting hurt in the process. That was
something she was always very careful about, not letting herself get
hurt by love. But Marihito, he seemed to thrive on the pain.

"Look, I'm gonna go share notes with Atasuke, okay?" Washu told
him, as she stopped fiddling with his uniform. "Make sure you're
ready for the contest, 'cause I really want to see you win this year,"

"I heard Atasuke talking about your butt behind your back," said
Marihito, looking over at Washu's classmate.

"Of course," Washu said, thinking that at least he seemed to be
paying attention to other people now, which was in some ways a good
thing. "Where else would my butt be?"

"That's not what I meant," Marihito replied.

"I know, I know," Washu grinned. "Would you prefer he talk about
it to my face?"

"Washu," said Marihito.

"Forget about it," she told him as she left. He watched her leave
very closely, and when she had finally mingled with the crowd he went
back and tended to his invention.

Though it appeared no amount of tending would save him from failing to
attain first place once more. And despite being placed in front of
Ken's orgazmotron, and Atasuke's cure for the common cold, and all
the other inventions that had been entered into the contest, there he
stood with a silver cup in his hands when the award ceremony came by. A
silver cup that filled with his tears, as he shrank into the darkness
and let the light reflect off its edges, catching Washu's face in its
faded, fingerprint- speckled splendor.

"So beautiful," he said to himself as Washu thanked the Academy.
"So beautiful,"

**

It was an ordinary, peaceful day. The Masaki Shrine lay nestled against
the heart of nature, far from the turbulent chaos of urban society. Not
even the birds dared disturb the tranquillity, as they silently swooped
across the blooming fields of festivity. The royal guardians kept their
watch over the pleasant paradise, not once striking up an argument as to
perpetuate their inner peace. The silence filled the air, as not a
single buzz or hum of electricity could be heard. Their pastoral complex
went through its daily workings lacking a single schism and with the
protective aura of sunlight all around. There was not a safer, more
relaxing place in the world.

This is, of course, because it was the only place in this world, and the
six humanoid figures dressed in battle attire descending from the sky
weren't just stopping by to take a look at the scenery.

"Looks like there's nobody about," Tenchi observed, drawing forth
the Light- Hawk Sword and scanning the surroundings. "We can't be
too careful, though,"

"Wow, everything looks just like it does in our world," said Mihoshi.

"Not exactly," Washu replied as she brought out a device that looked
just like a pocket calculator. She motioned towards the house with it
and pressed a few buttons, which caused the gizmo to beep and ping as it
worked. "There's a rather high inaccuracy level here. This
simulation isn't perfect; it would seem that it's being based on
Ryoko's memories rather than my own, far more accurate data files.
Intriguing,"

"But it looks just like our home," Tenchi said.

"He's right, Washu," Kiyone said, lowering her pistol for a
moment. "What's so inaccurate about it?"

"They're only little things, but they're many in number," Washu
explained. "The area that the Shrine covers is completely
disproportional to the genuine article. Ryoko's memories are so hazy,
obviously she hasn't spent much time taking in the precise
measurements of the housing and field layout. In addition to that, some
walls are more curved and rounded than they should be, and the paint
work used on the walls is a lighter shade of- ."

"We get the idea," Ayeka butted in. She was raring to get out of
this spooky twilight zone of a simulation. "Now, where's Ryoko? We
just need to find her and get out as soon as possible,"

"I'm afraid I cannot permit that," Sasami said.

"What did you say, Sasami?" Ayeka blinked, turning to the blue
haired infant. "Cannot permit what?"

"I didn't say anything!" whimpered Sasami.

"No, I did," came a surprisingly similar voice from behind them.
Turning around, they found themselves facing a replica of Sasami who was
standing in the field nearby. On her left shoulder was an equally
identical clone of Ryo-ohki. The new Sasami stared right back at them,
unflinching. "Leave this place, if you know what's good for you,"

"Most fascinating," Washu commented, typing in a few extra digits.
"There are even slight differences in this model of Sasami. Why on
Earth would he choose to base this simulation on distorted data from
Ryoko's mind? It doesn't make sense,"

"It's quite simple, really," a voice boomed overhead, the same
voice that Washu had heard in her lab earlier. The simulated backdrop
flickered as it spoke, showing trails of bright green on a black
background where the holographic projection had been shaped. Mihoshi
ducked behind Kiyone as it roared at them. "If I were to base the
world and the characters within it on the information from your
moderately informative databanks, they'd be so simplistic and down to
earth. It would be a bore to have to reshape them according to my will,
tweaking every little detail so that was fully adjusted to my great
scheme. When I use Ryoko's perspective, all that changes. I can
harness her bitterness and disdain towards you, her friends, and take it
to extremes she couldn't imagine were possible. This world's power
becomes far greater when I shape it out of her feelings rather than
basic words and descriptions, numbers and equations. Why, the very rock
you stand on could hold great significance and power in her mind.
which, of course, would enable me to do this!"

Mihoshi clung tightly to Kiyone as the ground beneath their feet started
to tremble. Without warning, the dirt below them exploded into the air
and shards of what appeared to be white sunlight were thrown into the
air, along with the six of them. Ayeka soared in the direction of the
lake, while Sasami was thrown headfirst towards a tree. Washu started up
her powers of levitation and deftly grabbed Sasami before she were to
come to any damage. Ayeka, however, didn't need attending to, and she
managed to rebound off the versatile lake surface as if it were a
trampoline of sorts. Tenchi and Mihoshi both landed on top of Kiyone.

"Are you guys alright?" Washu asked, placing Sasami down on dry land.

"Yeah, we're fi- AGH!" spluttered Tenchi, as he barely evaded a
bolt of purple energy that had been fired at him. "W-what was that?"

"Oh my lord," Mihoshi gaped at what had attacked them.

"It's. it's. it's." Sasami gulped.

"Oh no!" Ayeka gasped.

"Miaaaaaow!" Ryo-ohki screeched.

"Get off my back, Mihoshi," a dishevelled Kiyone demanded. Mihoshi
complied, and immediately Kiyone was joining them all in their
collective bouts of terror mixed with confusion.

Where the replicant Sasami had once been, there now stood one of the
most hideously cute villains they had ever faced in their lives. Atop
its ridiculously long, peach colored legs was a stubby, child-like body
covered in frills and other devastatingly adorable clothing attachments.
Over its flat chested abdomen it wore a tight outfit tainted with the
color of freshly picked cherries, with olive sequinned sleeves that
poured out behind it like a shroud of sun stained grass. Its patterned,
black belt that met in at its belly button served to pin down an
extremely short, white skirt that fluttered suggestively in the breeze.
Underneath it, the attacker wore revealing underwear. It wasn't
something any of them tended to notice typically in a villain, but when
the villain started to pirouette about the field and occasionally
display their rear in a coy manner, it became hard not to pay close
attention. In its oily fingers it clutched a sceptre of untold powers,
shaped as a candied rectangle upon which bloomed plastic petals of a
tacky flower. Out from the sepals jutted a pink rimmed, honeycomb heart
that glistened with almost as much brightness as the attacker's world
encompassing eyes of saccharine carmine. Through ocean blue hair it ran
the sceptre, causing the air to ring with righteous euphony as it
glanced by the overly grand buds of beauty that clipped its hair into
sprawling ponytails. And with a horrible gesture of unsurpassable charm,
it winked into each of their souls with dainty delectability.

"It's Pretty Sammy!" Sasami screamed, the terror and revulsion in
her voice welling over.

"Yup!" Pretty Sammy, Sasami's alter ego, chirped as she twirled
her fanny in their direction once more. "It's time for all of you to
open up your eyes to love! Or, I'll just have to tear your eyes right
out of their sockets! Heehee!"

"The horror." Kiyone said in a hushed tone, crawling away from the
magical girl. "The horror."

"Inexplicably cute yet dangerous rainfall attack. of love!"
exclaimed Pretty Sammy, throwing her hands into the air and curving the
heart shaped sceptre around in the air. Suddenly, stars began to rain
down from the heavens. Not your typical stars, either. These stars were
like chubby yellow shurikens, sharp enough to poke your eye out if you
weren't careful.

"Get behind me!" Tenchi yelled, bringing the Light-Hawk Sword to his
face and covering the girls with a protective barrier. The stars bounced
off the invisible barrier, clattering in a heap at the magical girl
Pretty Sammy's feet.

"That's not fair," she whimpered, tears welling in her
saucer-sized eyes. "You're s'posed to be good and fall down dead,
and stuff,"

"I've had it with this Barbie doll," Ayeka snarled, rushing
forward at breakneck speed and plunging a fist of fury directly into
Pretty Sammy's stomach. Magical energy fizzled and crackled around
Ayeka, and it was clear she was having trouble penetrating Pretty
Sammy's near impregnable defences.

"Baton flash!" squealed Pretty Sammy (taking the word 'flash' a
little too literally and exposing her rear once more), as she hurled the
unfortunate princess backwards with a blast from her mystical sceptre.

"How do we fight this thing?" Kiyone grunted, firing ray after ray
of laser fire at the magical girl only to have it rebound and nearly
catch her directly in the face. "I can't damage it in the slightest,
it's too. cute!"

"Even the Light-Hawk Sword is having trouble fighting that monster!"
Tenchi yelled, lunging in and out between heart-shaped projectiles.
"Washu, any ideas?!"

"None, I'm afraid," Washu replied, attempting to drag Mihoshi from
behind a boulder to no avail.

"You're telling us you don't have any theories whatsoever?!"
Ayeka cried, spinning helplessly out of control after being hit full on
by a barrage of carrot missiles. "Miss Washu, you must do something!

"I love you, you love me," sang Pretty Sammy as she began to gather
an army of purple dinosaurs about her. "Barney kicks your ass, whoopee!"

"Not if I can help it," said Sasami, throwing Ryo-ohki into the air.
"Ryo- ohki, transform now!"

"Miaow, miaow, MIAOW!" Ryo-ohki exclaimed. There was an explosion of
shadows in the sky as the little cabbit transmogrified and shifted,
increasing in mass at an incredible rate. From all corners of the
landscape came lashing strands of darkness, each of them intersecting at
Ryo-ohki's point in the sky. Moments later, Ryo-ohki hung there in
starship form, ready to do Sasami's bidding.

"Alright, Ryo-ohki!" Sasami clapped. "Now, take out that impostor!"

"Miaow.?" Ryo-ohki asked, looking from the similarly shaped Pretty
Sammy and back to Sasami again. As a spaceship, she was picking up the
exact same reading from both life forms on the ground, and it was
impossible to tell the difference. A giant bead of sweat dripped from
her bulky framework and landed on Sasami's head, drenching the poor
girl.

"Hey.!" Sasami coughed. "What gives, Ryo-ohki?"

"Your silly pet hasn't opened her eyes to love," Pretty Sammy
attempted to rationalize the situation in her own unique style. "It
doesn't know the difference between its master and a phoney, ha!"

"Your pet's dumber than mine!" Sasami yelled, pointing at the
Ryo-ohki replicant on Pretty Sammy's shoulder. "It's uglier, too!"

"Miaow miaow, miaow?" the fake Ryo-ohki said, almost as confused as
the starship hanging over them.

"Nuh-uh!" Pretty Sammy said, barely able to frown at Sasami for fear
of losing her adorable exterior.

"Is too!" replied Sasami, standing her ground while all the others
were kept busy by the newly formed army of purple dinosaurs. "My
Ryo-ohki is far superior to yours!"

"Prove it!" shouted Pretty Sammy, aiming the sceptre at the starship
in the sky and firing a beam of fluorescent light at it. Soon enough,
Ryo-ohki had reverted to her cabbit state, and was cleaning herself on
the ground at their feet. "If your Ryo-ohki is sooo great, what kind
of tricks can she do?"

"All sorts!" Sasami laughed. "More than yours can!"

"Such loveless impudence!" cried Pretty Sammy, tossing her own
Ryo-ohki replica next to Sasami's cabbit. "I bet my Ryo-ohki can do
ten times as much as yours can!"

"You're on!" replied Sasami, to both the cabbits' surprise.

"Um, Sasami?" Tenchi asked, slicing through a few dozen fluffy
dinosaurs with the Light-Hawk Sword as they cried out with warbling
wails of mixed joy and pain. "What exactly are you doing? Heh."

"You stay out of this, Tenchi," both versions of Sasami told him.

"Umm, alright," he coughed.

"I love you, you lov-."

"Shut up!" he said, chopping another cutesy dinosaur to pieces.

"Good idea, Sasami," Washu commended her, setting up a laptop on the
rigid back of Mihoshi cowering bulk. "You keep Pretty Sammy distracted
while I see if I can find a way to destroy her,"

"Can your Ryo-ohki dance?" Pretty Sammy asked, glaring at her twin.

"Sure!" Sasami snapped her fingers and the Ryo-ohki that belonged to
her began to perform a jig of sorts. "Can yours?"

"Can she!" scoffed Pretty Sammy, who also snapped her fingers. The
replicant Ryo-ohki began to dance in the exact same manner. "Can yours
sing?"

"Like an angel," Sasami nodded to Ryo-ohki.

"Miaaa-mia-mia-miiiaaaaaow!" the two cabbits sang.

"Your Ryo-ohki lacks the melodic alchemy of love," said Pretty
Sammy. "Whereas mine does not,"

"You're a liar!" Sasami accused the magical girl.

"Fine," Pretty Sammy replied, removing a carrot from some hidden
pocket beneath her skirt (Sasami didn't dare ask where). "One final
test to see whose Ryo-ohki is the better of the two,"

"Keep her busy, Sasami," Washu insisted. "I'm coming up with
something,"

"Hey, shouldn't I be helping everyone fight?" Mihoshi asked on all
fours as Washu worked away.

"No, you make a much better table," Washu smiled.

"Oh, I'm so proud of myself!" Mihoshi beamed.

"Here!" Pretty Sammy said, lobbing the carrot into the distance.
"Whichever cabbit gets the carrot and brings it back first is
officially declared the winner,"

"Fine," Sasami pouted. "Go get the carrot, Ryo-ohki!"

"Miaow!" said Ryo-ohki, saluting with a furry paw. Both the cabbits
set off in the direction of the distant vegetable, each of them
salivating wildly at the thought of finally having something to eat
after all this dancing. They didn't get far, however, before they both
rammed into one another nose- first, stopping them dead in their tracks.
They shook their heads and attempted to make the run one more time, and
sure enough they once again collided. So, they got to their feet again
and attempted the run.

BONK!

"Miaow?"

Run-run-run.

BONK!

"Miaow.?"

Run-run-run.

BONK!

"Hmm," Pretty Sammy contemplated, watching the two confused animals
continue to run into one another repeatedly. "My Ryo-ohki is much
better at failing than yours is,"

"Is not!" Sasami replied.

"Is too!"

"Is not!"

"Is too!"

"Is no-."

"Yaaaaaah!" Ayeka cried, leaping high into the air after
successfully defeating another legion of Barneys. Taking advantage of
Pretty Sammy's state of distraction, she dove over the swarm of
singing sauropods and swung a crescent kick of awesome power in the
direction of the magical girl. Before she knew it, her foot had come
into contact with solid flesh. Yet rather than hear the satisfying
screams of the squishy super-heroine, Ayeka found herself stuck in
mid-air.

"Why don't you pick on someone your own size?" the Ayeka replicant
quipped, swinging Ayeka around her head by the leg and throwing her into
the side of the Masaki house.

 From there, the Masaki Shrine became a raging inferno, as the two
Ayeka's battled for supremacy here, there, and everywhere. Nothing was
safe, as the two Juraian princesses tore apart their surroundings in an
attempt to damage one another. Boulders flew into the sky and exploded,
huge sections of turf were torn from the ground as they scraped by on
wings of hatred, and power logs bounced left and right as the
apocalyptic cat fight attempted to reach a climax. It seemed as if the
whole world were about to be swallowed up by their violent,
unadulterated virulence, and Sasami could only watch as they went about
pursuing warfare of epic proportions.

"I bet my sister can beat up your sister," Pretty Sammy said.

"No way," said Sasami. "Your sister is gonna get so battered,"

"That's it!" Washu cackled as she slammed her laptop shut once
more. She had donned sunglasses and radiation gear to protect herself
from the potential nuclear backwash that two fighting Ayeka's could no
doubt produce. "I figured out how to defeat Pretty Sammy!"

"Neat!" Mihoshi cheered, finally able to straighten her body. "How?"

"Professor Raymond Knowby of the Belchamp System had a theory,"
Washu explained, taking out a toothbrush-sized piece of equipment and
placing it in the air at around her eye level where it hovered without
succumbing to the effects of gravity. "That the only way to counter
the effects of Cutus Adorabilis is to subject the source to the most
repulsive, disgusting display that humanity has every produced,"

"Sounds gross," Mihoshi gulped as the device began to emit rays of
bronze light to form a projected screen in mid-air. "What's that do?"

"I had to scan the databanks of my supercomputer back in the lab to
locate a human produced display grotesque enough to destroy Pretty Sammy
once and for all," said Washu as the projected screen began to come
alive with static. "My only hope is that it won't be so effective
that it takes us with it,"

"Oh my, what is it?" Mihoshi squeaked, hiding behind Washu's
perfectly calm figure.

"You might wanna cover your eyes, Mihoshi," Washu advised.

Upon the screen flashed images of a gangly Jewish man with a crew-cut
hairdo screaming, singing, dancing, and causing random acts of violence
to various people. He sporadically spouted unfunny dialogue in weakly
performed voices that one could only assume he'd learned from hanging
around the same mindset as himself, namely five-year olds. Across the
top of the screen were the words 'The Best of Adam Sandler'.

"What's that terrible noise?!" Pretty Sammy howled, jerking back
and forth as she searched for the location of the repulsing waves of
failed humor. Her skin began to peel away in patches as the blisteringly
bad comedian continued his act, and her candy heart shoes broke away to
reveal zebra patterned socks that curled up as her feet slowly shrank
back into her legs. "Turn it off! Turn it off!"

"The price is wrong, bitch!" the man on the screen continued to
churn forth labored lines, each one of them causing rays of pink
sunlight to burst from Pretty Sammy's chest area. She was exploding
from within.

"Help me! Won't somebody help me?!" wailed Pretty Sammy,
attempting to salvage the last remnants of her powerful pulchritude. But
it was too late, and soon she had dissolved into a pile of nondescript
pink ashes, never to be found beautiful again.

"And strangely. I feel empty," said Washu jovially, as she turned
off the screen and placed the device in her pocket. "Good night, sweet
magical girl. And a flight of sailor scouts sing thee to thy rest,"

"Hey, I was enjoying that," gurgled Mihoshi, a bag of simulated
popcorn in her hands.

"Well, looks like our work is do-." Washu began, before ducking
between two falling trees and avoiding the wrath of the battling
Ayeka's. "Oh right, I forgot. The cat-fight of the century is still
goin' on,"

The replicant Ayeka laughed as she swung from tree to tree, knocking
each of them over in Ayeka's path as she gave chase. They ploughed
through the forest at an incredible pace leaving a trail of destruction
in their wake; woodland creatures poured like living blood from the
gaping wound they had carved in the dense foliage. Eventually they'd
gone full circle and came to rest nearby the others, where they
continued their superhuman rivalry.

"Why are you in such a hurry to defeat me?" the replicant asked,
summoning Azaka and Kamidake who charged at Ayeka with a flurry of laser
fire. "Afraid you'll miss your bedtime, little girl?"

"I don't talk like that!" yelled Ayeka, deflecting each of the
shots with Tenchi's help. "Besides, my bedtime is eight hours from
now. If you were any kind of accurate representation, you would know
that! But clearly, you are not,"

"Thank goodness for that," the replicant Ayeka replied, sending the
guardians forward into the melee. "I'd fight you myself, but I
wouldn't want to get my hands dirty with your blood,"

"Coward!" Ayeka snarled, striking forth at the guardians with her
Jurai powers. Azaka attempted to dive under her frantically rapid blows,
but instead found himself pounded into carefully stacked pieces of
firewood. "Even your guardians are weak! You are not worthy of my
status as a member of Jurai's royal family,"

"Boooring!" the Ayeka replicant yawned, driving them all backwards
with a wave of her hand. Kamidake lurched into action and bolted
squarely into Ayeka's midsection, whilst simultaneously keeping Tenchi
at bay with strategic laser fire. "Excellent work, Kamidake! Now,
destroy my inferior twin!"

"Yes, ma'am!" Kamidake affirmed, beginning to charge up a blast
that would no doubt disintegrate Ayeka's body to a cinder. However, he
was interrupted by a sudden burst of energy slamming into his fragile
wooden framework, causing him to explode into tiny chunks of wood.

"Ugh, it got in my hair!" Ayeka's replicant whimpered, combing
furiously at her purple locks.

"Now it's six of us against one," Kiyone smirked, patting her
trusty pistol that had taken out the impostor guardian. "Give yourself
up and tell us where Ryoko is!"

"Not a good idea, Kiyone," said Washu, grimacing. Kiyone turned to
the little genius, who had been surrounded by newcomers; namely
replicants of Mihoshi, Kiyone, and Tenchi.

"Now the odds are a little more even," the Ayeka replicant chuckled
as she spryly snatched her twin from her position on the ground and
hurled her into the air, planting a few well placed punches and flying
kicks into her already battered body.

"Kiyone, I'm scared!" Mihoshi blubbered, scrambling over to where
her partner stood. They faced their duplicates, which were also dressed
for combat in their identical Galaxy Police uniforms. Together, the
replicants cocked their guns and began to take aim. "What do we do?
What do we do?"

"Don't worry, Mihoshi," Kiyone said without bothering to ready her
own weapon. "If these really are our duplicates, they won't be able
to function as a team. You and I have never won a single battle
together, so there's absolutely no way that they could possibly do it!"

"Wowee, you're right," Mihoshi giggled. "I guess for once it's
a good thing that we're bad at our job,"

"Thank you for being such a lousy partner, Mihoshi," Kiyone laughed,
finally able to take pride in her associate. Her pride was cut short,
however, as they were soon fleeing from a bombardment of deadly Blaster
fire.

"I thought you said they wouldn't be able to do it.?!" Mihoshi
asked as she ran alongside Kiyone.

"Typical, even when you're supposed to fail you eventually screw the
whole thing up!" Kiyone looked back at the two no-nonsense duplicate
police officers.

"I'm sorry!" Mihoshi cried, falling over onto Kiyone as she whined
pitifully. Fortunately, she drove them both into the dirt behind a
conveniently placed boulder that the two battling Ayeka's had dropped
mid- fight.

"Interesting," muttered Washu, who was somehow able to avoid
partaking in the insanity. Instead, she sat atop a log and did
calculations on her laptop to try and locate precisely where Ryoko was
in the entire simulation. She looked over at the battlefield and saw the
dual Tenchi's fighting it out, each one countering every move that the
other put forward. Ryoko's intent observations of Tenchi made this
replicant the most accurate of the lot, and his power might easily have
surpassed that of the real Tenchi if his importance to Ryoko had any
effect on his Jurai powers in this world. "Whoever is controlling all
this has really taken advantage of the inaccuracies in Ryoko's
memories. Her past fear of Mihoshi and Kiyone as law enforcement
officers has made them into a skilled, formidable duo. And her
perception of Ayeka as a monster has, well. turned her into a monster.
How are we going to fight them if they're so much more powerful than
us in this simulation?"

"Think of something, please!" Ayeka cried as she hurtled by the
scientist and slammed into yet another mighty oak tree, causing the
trunk to splinter and crack as it limply fell down with a crash. "Oh,
my back,"

"It's useless!" the Ayeka replicant cackled, her fingernails like
claws as they flashed through the air and tore strips of flesh from
Ayeka's face leaving forked markings of smudged scarlet. The replicant
proceeded to choke Ayeka, as Washu struggled in vain to think of a way
to aid her friends. "There's no hope in fighting us! We're all far
greater in strength!"

"This is nuts!" cried Tenchi, dodging the razor sharp blade of light
that his duplicate wielded. "They don't seem to even have the same
weaknesses as us! Every time I try and find one, it seems to just get
covered up,"

"Washu, what should we do?!" Kiyone yelled, firing a few shots at
the replicants of her and Mihoshi from behind the boulder. "We're no
match for them!"

"That's it!" said Washu as she felt the slow mechanics of a
brainwave sparkle in her mind.

"What's it?" Mihoshi asked, fumbling with her pistol.

"You guys are no match for your duplicates!" Washu replied.

"Um, thanks, that really helps," Kiyone grunted. A massive bolt of
energy lanced off the face of the rock that she and Mihoshi were hiding
behind, causing it to crumble and reveal them in all their vulnerable
glory. "Washu, if you do have a point, please get to it. and fast,"

"Don't you get it? You guys aren't a match for your duplicates,"
said Washu, scampering over to where Sasami stood. "You're all
trying to fight your opponents as if they're identical to you, but
you're not the same. They have powers that you don't. They're
different to you guys! Their weaknesses might not be the same as yours,
so I advise you all to trade places!"

"Trade places?" Tenchi asked, parrying the masterful swordplay of
his twin counterpart. "What good would that do, Washu?"

"The duplicates you're fighting are able to predict your every move
because they know your abilities," Washu explained, setting up a force
field around herself and Sasami. "If you switch opponents, they might
not be able to counter your moves quite as easily, and we may just stand
a chance,"

"I'll take any chance we get," Tenchi said, leaping over the
replicant of himself and landing beside Ayeka. "Move over, Ayeka,
I'll take your duplicate,"

"Yes, Lord Tenchi," Ayeka groaned painfully, gathering herself
together and heading in the direction of the duplicate Galaxy Police
officers. "Mihoshi, Kiyone, take out Lord Tenchi's replicant!"

"Alright!" Mihoshi giggled nervously as she followed her partner
over to where Tenchi's replicant stood ready.

"This won't do you any good," the Ayeka replicant said.

"We'll see about that," Washu replied. "Okay, now fight!"

"I'm not sure how I feel about fighting Tenchi, Washu," Mihoshi
whimpered. "It just doesn't seem right, now that I think about it,"

"Mihoshi, it's not really Tenchi!" said Kiyone, raising her gun
and pointing it at Tenchi's duplicate. "If you don't fight him,
he'll destroy us. Do you want to be destroyed, Mihoshi?"

"Tenchi would destroy us?!" Mihoshi bawled, falling to her knees and
crying into her uniform. "Waaaaah! I don't want to be destroyed by
Tenchi!"

"Mihoshi, you're going to get us both killed!" Kiyone snapped,
scolding her partner. "God, how many times have I had to say this."

"I'm so sorry!" Mihoshi cried, tears staining her uniform.
"I'm so, so sorry!"

"I'm sorry too," Tenchi's replicant said.

"We could do without your sarcasm," Kiyone scowled at the replicant.

"No, I mean it," he replied, de-activating his phoney Light-Hawk
Sword and sheathing it once more. Kneeling beside the blubbering
Mihoshi, he offered her a handkerchief that he had produced from his
back pocket. "Here,"

"Thank you," squeaked Mihoshi, taking the hanky and blowing her
nose, as Kiyone looked on, dumbfounded. "You're such a kind evil
replicant,"

"Okay, what the heck is happening now?" Kiyone asked, looking to
Washu. "Why is he helping her instead of killing her?"

"Unbelievable!" Washu squawked giddily from her vantage point beside
Sasami. "Ryoko's memories have not only made him incredibly strong,
but they have also made him boundlessly noble! Even beyond the limits of
our own Tenchi,"

"That's possible?" Kiyone asked, looking at the replicant who had
his arm around the blonde airhead.

"Here, Mihoshi. Let me sing you a song, that might cheer you up,"
Tenchi's replicant soothed.

"Wheeee!" Mihoshi cheered. "I wanna sing too!"

"Then we'll sing together!" Tenchi's replicant laughed.

"Yaay! Old McDonald had a farm, eeeee-aye, eeee-aye, ohhhh! And on
that farm he had a-."

BLAM!

The replicant's lifeless corpse fell to the ground, a smoldering
bullet hole in its forehead.

"I can't stand sing-alongs," Kiyone muttered.

"Oh, Kiyone, we were just getting to the good part with the oink oink
here! And the oink oink there! Here an oink, there an oink, everywhere
an oink-." Mihoshi sang.

"I could always just shoot you and say I thought it was your
replicant, you know," Kiyone frowned.

"No, that's not the noise," said Mihoshi. "It's more of an
oink sound, try it!"

"Ugh," Kiyone started away from her. "Washu, how are the others
doing?"

"Oh, they're doing okay, but you might wanna move out of the way,"
said Washu, as two shadows began to close in on Kiyone.

"Whoops!" Kiyone grunted as she dodged out of the way of the bruised
bodies belonging to the two replicant police officers, which had fallen
from the sky. Up above them, Kiyone saw Ayeka sitting in the branches of
a tree as she sent a cluster of power logs down to retrieve the two
replicants so she could throw them once again. "Having fun, are we?"

"Oh, this?" Ayeka chuckled sadistically as she prepared to throw
them back down to the earth's surface once more. "I'm just giving
them some well earned exercise. It's really quite good for them,"

"Is that why they're bleeding from the ears?" Kiyone smirked as
the bodies hit the floor once more, every bone cracking from the sheer
impact.

"Just the ears?" asked Ayeka, sounding disappointed. "I would have
hoped they'd be bleeding from every orifice imaginable by now. Oh
well, this just means that more exercise is needed,"

"They weren't able to attack Ayeka due to her being one of the
princesses of Jurai," Washu told Kiyone as she reached the edge of the
force field. "They couldn't overcome their duty as sworn protectors
of Jurai and its monarchy, so they just let Ayeka go nuts on them!"

"Looks like you were right, Kiyone," Mihoshi snickered as she
gambolled over to them. "They really did suck at their job just as
much as we do,"

"On the contrary," said Washu. "They were simply too good at their
job, that was their downfall. It appears that all the inaccuracies which
seemed to be working against us originally, are now actually helping us
defeat them!"

"So. what you're saying is," Mihoshi puzzled. "If I want to be
a better police officer, I should let Ayeka throw me around?"

"Hey, no need to let Ayeka do it," Kiyone grinned. "I can do it
for her,"

"Okay!" said Mihoshi, while Kiyone closed in on her.

"Washu, if one of us happens to die in this simulation, what happens
to us? Do we die for real?" Sasami asked, her eyes wide with
inquisition.

"Well, the security codes have been tampered with," Washu replied.
"The safety mode has been switched off, so if we do get executed in
this world our minds will be severed from our bodies. Likewise, if Ryoko
loses herself in the fantasy in any way, we'll be taken with her. Our
connection is through her,"

"Oh no.Tenchi, are you alright?" Sasami called out to the prince.

"I'm fine, Sasami!" Tenchi replied, staring deep into the Ayeka
replicant's eyes. They had been facing off for quite some time; both
of them having yet to make the first move. There in the glade, the wind
quietened down and birds took off into the sky in what appeared to be
slow motion. And then, an idea flashed beneath his vision. "Hey, wait
a minute. You're not even going to fight me, are you?"

"Huh?" the Ayeka replicant blinked, remaining poised in her battle
stance.

"You can't fight me. you love me way too much," Tenchi smiled,
for once in his life he felt relief from that fact. "No matter how
much you want to, you won't be able to hurt me. It'd be against
your- OOF!"

The replicant's fist felt like it would have gone straight through his
ribcage and come out the other side of his abdomen if it had been thrown
with any more force. Burning pangs of searing pain shot across his
entire body as Ayeka's duplicate began a ferocious onslaught, knocking
him straight into the force field that Washu had erected for her own
protection. Unfortunately, it had the opposite effect on Tenchi.

"Owch," he said, sliding down the dome of energy.

"Hey, what happened?" Sasami asked. "I thought he said she
wouldn't attack him,"

"He neglected to remember that this was Ryoko's interpretation of
Ayeka," said Washu, shutting down the force field so she could help
him to his feet. "As far as Ryoko is concerned, Ayeka is more of a
danger to Tenchi than she is anything else. I should have warned him
before I told you all to switch opponents,"

"How are we going to defeat her, then?" asked Ayeka. "She knows
all my weaknesses, and she's too strong for Tenchi,"

"Maybe if we all worked together?" Kiyone suggested.

"Her Jurai powers are too strong," Washu said. "Even in replicated
form, she's as tough as a supernova. Any physical attack we could make
would be like throwing a snowball into Hell,"

The group of them stood there, bewildered as to what to do about the
very real(ish) threat of the simulated Ayeka. Whilst they stood and
thought, the Ayeka duplicate began to power up a capacious orb of
destructive energy in her hands and prepared to fire it at them all. She
dove into the air and swooped down on them from behind, readying to
strafe the group with blow after blow of laser coated death.

"Dieeee!" she screeched.

"Oh no!" Sasami cried, turning just in time to see Ayeka closing in
on the two cabbits that still thrived for succession over one another.
"Ryo-ohki, watch out!"

"Miaow?" the real Ryo-ohki asked.

"Miaow!" the duplicate cabbit squealed triumphantly, as she dove
past the genuine Ryo-ohki and headed straight for the carrot that lay on
the distant hilltop. "Miaow-miaow, miaaa-.!"

Before she knew it, the Ryo-ohki replicant had wandered straight into
the path of Ayeka's own raging replicant, and in a muffled collision
of fur and blindly haphazard laser fire, the two of them ran straight
into one another. In sheer fright, the duplicate Ryo-ohki dug her claws
into the duplicate Ayeka's scalp and hung on for dear life, as Ayeka
continued to launch herself in the vague direction of the six heroes.

"My hair!" Ayeka's duplicate cried, becoming distracted by the
thought of her own looks being in danger. In the process, she veered way
off course and narrowly missed destroying the six of them in a cloud of
fatality. "My beautiful hair! Get out of my hair! Oh, I simply cannot
take this!"

"Miaaaaow!" the Ryo-ohki replicant just sharpened her claws and held
on tighter, as Ayeka's duplicate yanked and tore her own hair out for
fear that blood might get in her heavenly locks.

"You must get out, Ryo-ohki, I can't see where we're-."
Ayeka's duplicate began. But as if luck would have it, there just
happened to be a boulder in her way and without the use of her sight she
plunged straight into it, knocking both herself and the cabbit out cold.

"Way to go, Sasami!" said Tenchi.

"I did that?" Sasami blinked innocently.

"Well, I can see that Ryoko has me all wrong," Ayeka sniffed as they
all wandered over to the motionless duplicates. "To think that I would
become distracted from defeating my opponents simply because there was
something wrong with my appearance. Now, watch me destroy this
ridiculously inaccurate version of myself!"

"Hey, Ayeka," Washu hissed as the princess bent down to deliver the
crushing blow to her duplicate. "Your epidermis is showing,"

"Oh goodness!" gasped Ayeka, blushing brightly and spinning around
while she waved her hands in the air around her waist. "Um, heh-heh,
hey Tenchi, why don't you do it?"

"Sure, Ayeka," Tenchi said, shaking his head. He drew the Light-Hawk
Sword and with a single swipe, he had obliterated the final threat to
their safety. "At last, we're done,"

"Miaow!" the duplicate Ryo-ohki leapt upwards and bit Tenchi on the
finger.

"Yowch!" spluttered Tenchi, having been taken by surprise. "I
guess we're not done!"

"Oh, don't kill it," Washu cooed, taking a carrot from her pocket
and tossing it to the simulated cabbit. "Here ya go,"

"Miaow-mia," Ryo-ohki's duplicate caught the carrot in mid-air and
sat itself down on the dew-sprinkled grass, munching and guzzling.

"Awww, how sweet of you, Washu," Mihoshi giggled, petting the duplicate.

"Eh, what can I say? I like cute," smirked Washu, swivelling around
and heading towards the Masaki Shrine. "C'mon folks, we've got a
Ryoko to catch,"

"Right!" Tenchi said, giving chase along with the others.

"Hey, wait for me!" Ayeka called, checking her battle outfit for any
possible rip or tear that her 'epidermis' could be poking through.
She staggered after the others, too busy with her own looks to notice
the explosion of fur behind them.

"Gotta love those carrot bombs," Washu muttered.

"What did you say, Washu?" Sasami asked.

"Oh, nothing," chuckled Washu.

"Miaaaow.?" Ryo-ohki asked warily from her perch on Sasami's
shoulder.

Tenchi slowly took the lead, as he felt a sense of urgency in the grass
beneath his feet pushing him onwards. At first it was only faint, but it
grew denser and denser with its demand. Soon, he wasn't just walking,
but briskly strolling onwards as if fate itself had fished him out of
the group and was now reeling him into its web of quickened destiny.

"Tenchi, wait up!" Sasami called after him, but was stopped in her
tracks by Washu. The others all paused and watched the young boy walk
on. For they could see exactly what was waiting for him on the steps of
the Masaki house, and it was not something with which they were to
tamper. It was for Tenchi alone to confront.

"I suppose you will be wanting to enter this place," the words came
from Katsuhito's duplicate sounding like chiselled hieroglyphs of
antiquity. He sat only in anticipation of Tenchi's arrival, for it was
clear he needed no rest. It was a moment that Tenchi had dreaded in his
wildest fantasies, and in this nightmarish dreamscape it was coming to
pass. Katsuhito rose to his feet without difficulty or strain, his
agility was that of a young, athletic man. no, not a man. A warrior.
"This will not happen, my grandson,"

"Grandfather," Tenchi said, reaching for the Light-Hawk Sword. He
would never have stood up to his actual grandfather in this way, but in
the knowledge that it was just a simulation, he was able to take weak
comfort in doing so. "If you don't let me and my friends past.
I'm afraid I'll have to strike you down,"

"Never once have you bested me, Tenchi," Katsuhito's duplicate
replied, reaching out with his hand and plucking the duplicate
Light-Hawk Sword from the replicant Tenchi's cold, dead grasp. The
sword flew through the air and landed in his outstretched fingers.
"And I feel the doubt in yourself. You know you're no match for the
one who trained you,"

"This is bad," Washu mumbled to herself, as she watched the two men
engage one another mentally. "There's no way Tenchi can beat Lord
Katsuhito like this,"

"But Miss Washu, shouldn't we have faith in Tenchi?" Sasami asked.

"She's right, Washu," said Ayeka, scoffing at the scientist. "If
we just believe in Tenchi, everything will work out alright. Isn't
that always how it goes?"

"Look, when we're screwed, we're screwed," Washu said. "It
doesn't matter how much we believe in him. We could clap our hands and
say we believe in fairies a hundred times over if we wanted! It
wouldn't change anything. Tenchi's no match for Katsuhito,
especially in this simulation,"

"Why, what's the difference between the simulation's version of
Yosho and my brother?" Ayeka asked.

"Ryoko was imprisoned by your brother seven hundred years ago,
remember?" Washu reminded her. "In her memories, he is still the
young man he once was, capable of taking away the very light of day and
locking her away for half a dozen lifetimes. She has grown used to him
in our world, but a part of her fears him like no other. I'm afraid
his powers will be of great magnitude here. I'm not sure Tenchi can do
it,"

"Shouldn't we help him, then?" Kiyone asked.

"Are you nuts?" Washu asked. "Pay attention. The only reason
we're still alive is because we haven't tried anything. Ryoko fears
Katsuhito; there's a huge black mark in her brain where she was
trapped in that cave. Her entire existence became null and void at that
point, and it was all Katsuhito's doing. There's no telling what the
simulated version will be capable of; he might even be able to trap us
all in a never-ending slumber ourselves! If Ryoko fears it, it's gonna
happen to us. So just keep your mouth shut while Tenchi has this little
moment with his grandpa, mmkay?"

"O.kay," Ayeka replied.

The two combatants faced one another, their weapons drawn and their
senses as sharpened as their blades. In Tenchi's mind, this was so
simulation. If anything, this was greater than reality. He had always
felt the inferiority when it came to training with his grandfather, and
right now that weighed on him like an entire ocean rested on his
shoulders. Behind him, the girls he had sworn to protect were about to
get a good look at his true abilities when push came to shove. The
amount of respect they had for him at times seemed endless, but now they
were about to see just how weak he was in comparison to his own blood
relative. But he had a chance, one chance, at proving fate wrong. A
chance that real life had never handed to him. He thanked the cruel
simulation for offering him such a crooked step.

"What's wrong, Tenchi?" asked Katsuhito. "Afraid to take the next
step?"

"I'm not afraid," Tenchi replied.

"Then strike at me," urged Katsuhito. "Or do you falter simply
because of that little feeling called love? Or maybe it's fear."

"Yaaah!" Tenchi cried out, taking a swing at his grandfather and
missing completely. Katsuhito had leapt over the boy's head and was
now two feet behind him.

"Hey, Tenchi," he said.

"Wh.?" Tenchi turned around, only to have Katsuhito knock the
Light-Hawk Sword from his focused, albeit nervous, fingers. His heart
skipped a beat as he watched it careen away from him, so much sweat
poured from his brow that it became hard to see.

"Want to go get that?" asked Katsuhito, folding his arms and tapping
his feet.

"You can't humiliate me in front of them," Tenchi said, retrieving
the Light-Hawk Sword without looking away from his grandfather. "If
that's what you're trying to do, you might as well stop trying,"

"Even now, in the words you speak, you doubt yourself," Katsuhito
replied, scratching his brow with the hilt of his duplicated weapon.
"Afraid of disappointing them again, eh?"

"You.!" Tenchi growled, but his grandfather was too fast. The
blade once more scuffed the stone steps and fell out of reach, as
Katsuhito's skills had outdone those of the young boy. Tenchi started
down the steps, this time turning his back on the old man.

"And now you dare to disrespect your elders," Katsuhito frowned.
"Ah well, that is the insolence I have come to expect from you, boy,"

"Is that what this is about?" Tenchi asked, the gradual glimmers of
realization breaking behind his eyes as he returned to face his
grandfather with the sword once more. "This isn't about defeating me
in combat, this is about wearing me down in front of the others to the
point where they can't hold any faith in me. because if that ever
happened."

"They would be far better off," Katsuhito said, finishing his
sentence for him. "They would know the real you, the coward they never
really loved. They all have far better things to do than hang around a
mouse, you know,"

Tenchi looked back at the girls. Perhaps it was just the shadows of the
trees that hung overhead, but they all appeared to be gently fading out
of sight. The more he thought about it, the more it seemed that they
truly would have been better off without him. Princess Ayeka and Sasami
could just return to Jurai, to their palace and their people. Washu was
a genius, she didn't need him. Mihoshi and Kiyone had jobs of their
own, responsibilities that they had to carry out. What good was he to
them if he couldn't even stand up to his own grandfather?

"Tenchi," said Katsuhito, retracting the blade of his duplicate
Light-Hawk Sword and placing a hand on Tenchi's neck. He no longer
felt like a simulation. Tenchi, however, felt like a complete fraud,
stringing these girls along and acting like a hero. He despised himself.
"If you really wanted to protect these women, why did you bring them
here? You only endangered them by doing so. Take them back to your
world, at least there it's safer. You do want them to be safe, don't
you?"

"Yes, grandfather," Tenchi mumbled.

"Good," replied Katsuhito, giving Tenchi a solid push in the
direction of his entourage. Tenchi began to walk towards them, the
expressions on their faces morphing from fear to a mixture of shock and
horror. or was it disappointment? Tenchi sighed and continued to walk.
He didn't want to endanger the girls. If anything happened to them, it
would be all his fault.

Then an image appeared in his head, an image of a girl who wouldn't be
able to cope without him around. One who needed his help at this very
moment, one that required him to be a hero. A girl he had rescued many
times before, and was going to do so again no matter what the cost.

"Ryoko," he said, finally remembering why he had come into this
world in the first place. It was as if his brain had flown through the
clouds in the sky and had broken through to the other side with renewed
perception. Halfway between the girls and his destiny, he turned back to
his grandfather. "You. you tried to make me forget,"

"So that's what it is," Washu said, watching them with great
scrutiny. "Ryoko's memory of her imprisonment has given Lord
Katsuhito the power to conceal our own thoughts, to draw a curtain
across our memories and twist things to his advantage,"

"Maybe he can help us forget about that outfit Pretty Sammy was
sporting," Ayeka grunted.

Tenchi stared down at his supposed grandfather, despite being twelve
steps below him. With such a cheap trick that Katsuhito's duplicate
had used, Tenchi knew now that in battle he still had a chance at
defeating the old man. After all, his sword-fighting skills couldn't
have amounted to much if he had to resort to such trickery. Could it?

"Hey Tenchi," Katsuhito said from above, as Tenchi had once more
been lost in thought.

"Huh?" Tenchi looked up in time to see Katsuhito's blade come down
onto his head. There was enough time to raise his own sword and deflect
the replicant's blow from striking him down, as he rolled out of the
way and onto the patio. Frustrated, he looked around, but Katsuhito was
nowhere to be seen. "Great, where'd he go now?"

"Tenchi, up above you!" Ayeka called out. "The roof!"

Before Ayeka could specify the precise location of her brother, she felt
numerous sets of invisible hands lifting her up from the ground. Cold
fingers like icy tendrils wrapped themselves around her throat, and she
began to gasp for air. Utterly helpless and unable to speak, she tossed
and turned in the air and prayed that her simulant brother would spare
her life.

"I told you not to try and help him, didn't I?" Washu frowned as
she snapped her fingers. Pain relief washed over Ayeka and she slumped
to the ground, barely conscious. "Now, please don't try that again,"

"Point taken," Ayeka coughed, looking back to Lord Tenchi and her
brother's duplicate.

Her small piece of advice had apparently worked for Tenchi, as the young
Juraian prince now held a slight advantage over his grandfather. Tiles
fell clumsily to the smooth patio and shattered, as the two warriors
continued to do battle. Tenchi had his grandfather on the move, never
letting up with his array of dazzling swordplay. Ultimately, Tenchi took
one last swipe at the old man, and watched his he fell gracefully to the
floor below. Before he could make up for his accidental descent, Tenchi
had landed beside him. Katsuhito looked up into the fiery eyes of his
grandson, as the Light-Hawk Sword pressed close to his face, playing
with the sunlight's sensations in a deathly stream of resplendent
conquest.

"Tenchi." the old replicant said.

"Give up?" Tenchi smiled with confidence, ready to deliver the final
blow. The air around his head suddenly filled with fierce friction, an
eerie whistling sound pierced his eardrums, and immediately he lost his
sense of triumph. His mind was split in two, converging in a vortex of
forgetfulness. Invented idealism mixed with the very fabric of reality,
and in his head he could no longer see the simulation for what it really
was. He saw his injured grandfather before him, helpless and near death,
and he wanted to aid the man. "Grandfather."

"Tenchi," Katsuhito's duplicate grinned, placing a hand on his
Light-Hawk Sword. The girls could see that the replicant was about to
plunge it straight into Tenchi's misguided heart, and they could do
absolutely nothing.

"Tenchi! Look out! Tenchi!!" Ayeka screamed as her world fell to
pieces, the windows of the house before them shattered and the very
skies boiled with the rage of its master. There was no end to the pain.

**

"You really should get this cut," Washu said, running a hand through
Marihito's long hair just to annoy him. "It's getting out of
control,"

"I like it that way," Marihito lied, flinching away from her as if
they hadn't known each other for five years.

Washu's success at the Science Academy had almost mirrored
Marihito's failure. For every little project she had completed and
every progression she had made through the courses, there were tasks
Marihito had yet to finish and overgrown jungle paths in his timetable
that he'd been too timid to travel across. They had remained friends,
despite his failure (which Washu told him was all in his head. but his
head was real, so obviously his failure was too).

The Academy shone with her between its walls. All over the place,
you'd find framed photographs of Washu's achievements, and in her
dorm she'd amassed quite a collection of certificates that displayed
her greatness. The sad thing was, despite Marihito's jealousy, he
agreed with every printed word that the Academy wrote about her. She was
a genius. She was his star of hope.

When she was around, the Academy shone with the brilliant light from her
eyes. And he lived in the shadow of her successes, scrounging what
little pride he could find before it was swallowed up the sunlight.

"I'm serious," said Washu, handing Marihito a tray of bunsen
burners and lowering her safety goggles so he could see just how serious
she really was. "Your hair could prove dangerous around the lab,"

She had been so successful over the past two years, that the Academy had
awarded Washu her very own tenure of a science lab. It was one of the
older designs, one the Academy never used anyway. Washu had told them
all that she had big plans for it, and that she would need an assistant.
She had chosen Marihito, saying he was trustworthy.

He'd never forget the looks on the council members' faces when they
heard this, or the tone in their voices when they'd questioned her
about it. They saw him as some kind of talentless monkey boy. Then
again, who wouldn't when he always stood next to her. anybody would
look like nothing next to her. she was perfect.

"I don't want your head catching on fire, y'know," Washu
chuckled as she sauntered over to the other side of the lab and began to
rearrange the beakers and tubes. He loved the way she wore that
lab-coat. The way its straight, snow-white folds of carefully tended
material rose and expanded like small hillocks around her chest, and the
way its flaps came down across her thighs and made way for her legs.
she made even the simplest things so beautiful. "Wouldn't be good
for my reputation, would it? Heh,"

"I wouldn't know how to cut it," Marihito sighed, placing the tray
down on its designated lab surface. He didn't want to hurt her
reputation, whether she was joking or not.

"Let me do it, then," Washu suggested, as she walked over to where
he was standing. "Don't worry, it won't hurt,"

"I'm not worried about that," said Marihito, shrinking away from
her again.

"Then why?" Washu asked, reaching into one of the drawers and
getting out a pair of scissors. The skin around her eyes wrinkled as her
face burst into a tapestry of joyful whimsy, and she snapped the
scissors playfully in his direction. Licking her lips, she stepped
forwards with feigned ferocity. "C'mon, lemme at that hair!"

"Hey," Marihito laughed, nearly falling backwards over a stool.
Washu took advantage of his position and forced him downward into a
sitting stance. From there, she began to snip away at his brown hair. He
wished she wouldn't do that, he'd tried so hard to get it to look
like hers. "You'd better not make me bald,"

"Aww, I bet you'd look cute bald," Washu joked. Marihito watched
as tufts of brown hair fell about, covering the dark floor that he had
so recently been sweeping. "So, what do you think of the lab so far?
Looks good, doesn't it?"

"Mmmph," Marihito mumbled, unable to take his eyes off Washu. She
was leaning over him in such a way that caused her chest to be mere
inches away from his face. "Looks. really nice,"

"I think by the time we're finished with it, it'll look good as
new. Then we can do all sorts of stuff in private," Washu nodded to
herself.

"Oh.?" Marihito asked.

"Yeah," replied Washu. "You know. experiments, tests, all sorts
of stuff. It'd be on a much larger scale than we'd normally have
available, without all those pesky students getting in our way.
Doesn't that sound great?"

"I suppose so," Marihito said. Was she flirting with him? He
couldn't tell. No, she couldn't have been. He didn't deserve that
kind of treatment from her, and it just wasn't like her at all to
flirt so openly. He knew, for he'd seen her with boys. She was an
innocent little flower. even her smell was pure, in this stench ridden
lab. "We'll need some air fresheners, I think,"

"Yeah, you're right," said Washu, looking up for a second.
"That's a nasty stink, like sulphur or something. Ah well, no
problem,"

"So beautiful," Marihito couldn't help whispering as he stared
into her ample chest. Tears filled his eyes and he begged to be released
from this titillating torment she was putting him through. He was
unworthy.

"What?" Washu asked. She stopped cutting for a second, and a few
hairs from his head floated down onto her uniform. Idly, she brushed it
off with her hand. "What'd you say?"

"I meant." Marihito began, transfixed by her brushing. "The lab
is going to be beautiful,"

"Awww, you really think so?" chirped Washu, grabbing him by the
sides of his head and squeezing softly as if he were a child. "Yeah,
it will be!"

"It will," Marihito said, with more meaning than Washu could have
possibly imagined.

All around him, he saw fantastic possibilities. In his head, a bare wall
became a mural of his languished subjection to Washu's magnificence;
the sparsely painted ceiling turned into a decorated delight, supported
by columns of her credentials. Everywhere he looked, he saw a way to
praise her very being. He would make this room his temple, and in it he
would worship her via his work. Smiling, he looked up at her.

"It'll be so beautiful," he said, as she continued to cut his hair.

And all around the chair he sat on, the discarded brown locks piled up,
as did his obsession.

**

Ryoko opened her eyes to be greeted by a pounding noise. At first, she
thought it was just her heartbeat. After all, the ride she'd taken
last night had been one Hell of a roller coaster. She turned onto her
front, pulling back the cushion that had somehow fallen onto her face.
The pounding noise refused to go away.

"God," she grunted as she sat up, treating her lack of clothes as a
triviality. "What the heck is that sound? If Mihoshi somehow managed
to blow up the cooker again."

She trailed off in mid-sentence, picking herself up and floating over to
the window. Whatever the noise was, it was coming from outside. For a
moment, she wondered why Tenchi hadn't stuck around to be with her
after their night of passion. Then, her questions were all answered in
one horrible bundle.

"Oh. my." she whispered, placing a clammy hand on the window and
feeling the sweat stick to it.

Outside in the field, a collection of creatures stood. Indistinct and
ugly, they shuffled about in place as they half-patrolled a small area
of land. They had no real form, and almost looked as if someone had
taken a slice out of reality and blurred it to the point that whatever
stood in that air pocket became indistinguishable from the surroundings.
But Ryoko could see them, like cotton clouds of callousness they stood
and watched. It must have been some sort of cloaking device, she thought
to herself. Then, she saw the bodies.

All around the creatures (of which there were six), the corpses of her
friends lay bloodied and immobile. Ryoko rubbed her eyes and looked
again, but they were still there. Kiyone, Mihoshi, Sasami, Ryo-ohki,
even Ayeka.

And Tenchi.

His lifeless body seemed stiffer than the rest of them. Ryoko watched
with a heavy heart as mist poured from his parted lips, like his soul
escaping into the heavens. A solitary tear fell down her cheek and
dripped from her naked chest. She felt colder than Death's
life-stained scythe, and just as destructive. Never before had she felt
so enraged with sadness. For she had seen the only one she had ever
loved in a pool of his own blood.

Blood that now dripped from the sword of one of the creatures. A
creature that was locked in battle with Tenchi's grandfather.

"AAAAARGH!" Ryoko screamed, her battle suit forming around her naked
body as she let her anger take control. Without bothering to simply pass
through the window or teleport outside, she dove through the glass and
flew forwards in the direction of Tenchi's murderer.

"Ryoko!" Tenchi gasped, turning around before he could notice
Katsuhito's drawn blade. "There you are!"

"Die!!!" Ryoko screamed, unable to see his true form or hear his
voice. Instead she saw a disguised creature that had taken away the love
of her life, and with hatred filling her lungs like toxic fuel, she
brought forth her laser sword and lunged at him with all her might.

"Ryoko.?!" Tenchi gasped, leaping backwards. In her confused rage,
Ryoko managed to slice Katsuhito clean in half while she aimed for
Tenchi once more. The old man's body crumpled like a sandcastle caught
in the rain, blood spilling over the patio as Tenchi slowly came back to
his senses; the spell on his mind broken. "Ryoko, it's me! It's
us.! We're here to-."

"AHHH!!!" Ryoko cried, taking huge, deadly swings at him. Tenchi
barely managed to dodge them, as he skipped hurriedly down the steps of
the house and headed towards the group of spectators. "I'LL KILL
YOU! I'LL KILL YOU ALL FOR WHAT YOU DID!!!"

"Washu, Ayeka, Sasami, help me!" shouted Tenchi, running as fast as
he could as the furious space pirate gave chase. Her laser sword hummed
with a vicious stabbing force as she attempted to slice him to little
pieces.

"Washu, what's going on?" Sasami asked the scientist, who had been
experiencing more of those stirring memories from her past. Ayeka had
stormed off in the direction of the insane Ryoko. "Why is Miss Ryoko
trying to hurt Tenchi.?"

"I don't know, it. oh no," said Washu, as Sasami tried to follow
her gaze. She appeared to be looking at the dead replicants that were
all around them. "She must have seen these dead bodies and thought
we'd been killed. Whoever's controlling this simulation must be able
to warp her vision, making it appear that we're the impostors that are
brutally murdering her friends. Now she's going kill us all,"

"That's not good, huh?" Mihoshi asked.

"I'm afraid not, Mihoshi," Washu replied. "Ryoko is capable of
mass destruction on an incredible level, I'm not sure we'll be able
to defeat her."

"We don't want to defeat her!" cried Sasami, as she watched Ayeka
attempt to restrain Ryoko's onslaught with little luck. "We want to
help her!"

"I'm afraid that might not be the easier task," Washu sighed,
closing her eyes.

"Ryoko!" Ayeka yelled, standing firmly between the rampant space
pirate and her beloved. "This madness must stop!"

Her pleas were in vain, for as Ryoko passed over her in a jagged arc of
animosity, she lowered her laser sword and caught Ayeka with it. The
lower right-hand side of her face split open and blood poured down from
her cheek. Crying with pain, she fell to her knees and clutched at her
face. Tears mixed with blood, creating a stinging saltwater sensation
across her mouth.

"Ayeka!" Tenchi gasped, stopping for a second. He tried to get to
her, but found himself lying on his back as Ryoko's knee came
thrusting into his face. He could feel his nose was probably broken, and
his face started to feel numb.

"Now for you," sneered Ryoko, pinning him to the ground with her
thighs. She chuckled maniacally, for she didn't care about anything
anymore. Raising her laser sword above her head, she prepared for her
loss to be half-satiated by vengeance.

"Ryoko, no!" Sasami screamed. "Don't kill him!"

"Ryoko." Tenchi was barely able to speak, with the bitter taste of
copper oozing down his throat. "Don't."

Ryoko paused and looked at the creature. Parts of it were beginning to
show through its blurred physique. Shaking her head, she told herself
that it was just its power fading, and that she should strike now if she
were to have it feel the pain she felt rather, than simply slip away
peacefully.

"Ryoko." Tenchi said again, noticing her hesitation. "Your mind
may be under someone else's control. but your heart isn't. look
into your heart. don't do this."

Images from Ryoko's past flashed before her eyes. She remembered
sitting in the cave and watching Tenchi growing up, and escaping just so
they could play together. She remembered hiding in his bed, lying in
wait for him to get home so that she could get her gems back. She
remembered being taken prisoner by Kagato, and being rescued by Tenchi.
She remembered so much, that her heart ached just to think that he was
now dead. Then, the pain stopped, and she looked into her arms and saw
the creature's true form. Through her misty misconceptions she saw
where her love really existed. She saw Tenchi.

"Oh, Tenchi," Ryoko gasped, holding him close. "What happened.?
I thought you were."

"It's alright," Tenchi told her, wishing it really was.

"I didn't hurt you, did I?" asked Ryoko, looking through watery
eyes at his face. "Oh, your nose. I'm so sorry."

"Wow, Tenchi!" Washu said, scurrying over with the rest of them.
Even Ayeka had forgotten about her injury and was now stood beside
Sasami. "You saved Ryoko. How'd you manage it?"

"I'm just lucky, I guess," Tenchi laughed weakly.

"Saved her?!" Ayeka snapped, suddenly remember her injured face and
pointing it out for all to see. "It was Tenchi who needed saving from
her! You know, you almost had us all killed, Ryoko!"

"I'm sorry," Ryoko said, drawing gasps from half of the group.
"I guess I just thought you'd all. oh my God, Tenchi, did I kill
Yosho?"

"No, it was just a replicant," Tenchi said, standing up and brushing
himself off.

"A wha.?" asked Ryoko.

"You're in a simulation, Ryoko," Washu explained. "None of this
is real. Except for us, of course,"

"Is this some kind of a joke?" asked Ryoko. Washu shook her head.
"How long have I been in here, then?"

"Oh, around twelve hours," said Washu. "Not one experience
you've had in this world has been real,"

"Not even one of them.?" Ryoko gulped, eyeing Tenchi.

"Not even one," Washu smirked.

"Damn," grunted Ryoko. She turned to Ayeka. "And I suppose
you're back to your normal, perky self?"

"I'll give you perky, you monster woman!" Ayeka snarled, swiping a
fist at the space pirate.

"I'll take that as a yes," Ryoko smiled, dodging the blow. "So,
how do we get out of this phoney paradise?"

"Yeah, Washu," Kiyone said. "We've found Ryoko, so we can go
now, right?"

"I'm afraid not," said Washu, pointing above her head. Kiyone and
the rest of them looked upwards to see what was keeping them from
leaving.

In the sky, there hovered a small platform. It resembled something that
one might have found in Washu's lab, and it flitted around in the air
with a life of its own. The distinct buzz its propulsion technology gave
off even reminded them of Washu's lab. In fact, the person seated on a
metallic throne right in the centre of the platform resembled someone
out of Washu's lab. It was Washu herself.

"Hey, what gives?" Ryoko asked.

"It must be another duplicate!" said Tenchi.

"Is that what you think?" the newcomer asked, hovering closer to
them (but not too close).

"It's no duplicate." Washu said, taking a few steps back. "I
think we found our man,"

"Huh?" Tenchi blinked, looking from Washu to the supposed duplicate.
"Washu, what are you trying to.?"

"You're the one that brought me here, aren't you!" said Ryoko,
once again feeling her powers dissipate. "You bastard! Come down here
so we can fight, face to face!"

"Washu, why does he look like you?" Mihoshi asked. "Or do you have
a twin brother. sister. uh. do you have a twin?"

"He's just playing head games with us," growled Washu, staring up
at the platform. She too felt her abilities fading. "Mihoshi, Kiyone,
fire at that jerk!"

"That won't do any good," the Washu shaped figure warned. Even its
voice was identical to her own, and it was most disconcerting. "Your
weapons have been discharged by my superiority. You are all powerless to
oppose me,"

"No, I think it's just jammed," Mihoshi squeaked, pointing the gun
to her face and pulling the trigger desperately to see if any shots
would come out. "C'mon, work!"

"What do you want from us?" Ayeka asked the figure. "Tell us,
please!"

"I never thought I'd see the day when a Juraian princess begged me
for something," the figure smiled to itself, stealing Washu's
childlike grin. "Do it some more!"

"Hey, you!" Ryoko snarled. "If I had my powers I'd blast you out
of the sky, you hear me?"

"But you don't," the figure mocked her. "So, tough!"

"Let us go," said Kiyone. "We've done nothing to you,"

"You'd be the expert on doing nothing," the figure replied,
inching forward on its throne. "In all the quests and adventures
I've seen in Ryoko's head, not once have you taken a pivotal role of
any sort. It must be so fulfilling to know that you're a completely
ineffectual friend to her,"

"She's got you there, Kiyone," Mihoshi said.

"Shut up!" Kiyone frowned. "I've done lots of important things!
I. well, that is, I. I fired at the. thing."

"Hahahaa!" the figure chortled. "What a motley group you guys
make. The blonde airhead who can't get anything right and her
worthless friend, the spoilt princess and her baby sister, the
rambunctious rogue and her indecisive prince. it's a wonder you guys
get anything done!"

"Did you just bring us here so you could criticize us?" Ryoko asked.
"Listen, pal, I get enough of that in the real world from Ayeka. I
don't need this,"

"I'm not spoilt!" Sasami snapped. "And Ayeka's not a baby!"

"Um. I think it was meant to be the other way around, Sasami,"
Kiyone whispered.

"Oh," said Sasami. "I'm not a baby!"

"Maybe I'll just kill you all right now," the figure mused,
charging up what appeared to be a laser rifle that hung beneath the
platform. "It'd save the world a lot of worry. It's not safe
having you guys continue to exist, you know,"

"Or you could set us free?" suggested Mihoshi.

"No, I like the killing thing better," the figure replied.

They all covered their eyes as the laser rifle began to fire, blistering
the ground around them and leaving scorched soil in its wake. On closer
inspection, Washu saw that rather than soil, blank patches of air were
being upturned by the laser fire. She covered her eyes again to protect
her sight from the burning light of the laser. When the noise had died
down, and they all found their bodies were still intact, they opened
their eyes and looked around.

The Shrine had disappeared, and had apparently been blown away by the
laser fire. Instead, they now found themselves inside a cube of darkness
dotted with green trails of light. The landscape hadn't totally been
obliterated, and with her keen perception Washu could make out the
outlines of many distant forests that were undoubtedly non-existent. It
was as if someone had crafted a room out of the very absence of light.
Strangely, they found themselves to be lit up perfectly, as if someone
were shining an enormous spotlight on them from the limitless reaches of
the charcoal colored ceiling.

"Such a primitive design, wouldn't you say, Washu?" the figure
asked, their position hadn't changed and neither had their form. "Of
course, I'll bet you don't even remember constructing this. Do you?"

"Why have you-." Washu began.

"Wrong answer," the figure floated away into the darkness on its
platform until it became impossible to make out. "And there I was
thinking you'd have a little more respect for me. After all, we both
look the same, and I know how much you love yourself to death,"

"Man," said Ryoko, watching him fade away. "What kind of villain
just dumps us in the middle of nowhere without a long, drawn out
explanation as to his actions? He didn't even torture us,"

"I don't think he's through yet," Washu said. Her speculation
proved to be quite correct, as the bulging mass of the incongruous,
distant landscapes began to part. The backdrop appeared to be splitting
down the middle, opening as if it were a doorway or portal of some sort.

"Okay, Washu, you're the genius." Ayeka said. "Tell me what that
is,"

"It doesn't appear to be dangerous," replied Washu. "It's not
giving off any kind of harmful radioactive waves, and it's not a
vortex. I guess we'll just have to wait,"

"In short, she has no clue," the voice of the figure echoed around
the room. "Funny, isn't it? You'd think after she had designed
this masterpiece, she would know how it all works and what goes into it,
wouldn't you? Poor thing's going senile, I think,"

"He's sure cocky," Ryoko muttered, looking about for a source of
the voice. "What's he talking about anyway, Washu?"

"I don't know," said Washu, though she seemed a little shaken by
the words.

"She says that a great deal," the voice came back. "For a genius,"

"Alright, we've had enough of that!" Ryoko said. "If you're
going to kill us, just kill us. Quit being such a coward!"

The grand opening that had appeared in front of them now darkened in the
very middle ever so slightly as to suggest movement. In the distance,
they could hear the faint clanging of shoes on metal. it was
footsteps. Something was coming towards them from within the opening,
and whatever it was it didn't sound friendly.

"W-w-what's that sound?" Mihoshi asked, practically leaping into
Kiyone's arms in fright.

"Maybe you shouldn't have called him a coward, Ryoko," Ayeka
glared at the space pirate.

"Who, me?" asked Ryoko. "You're the one who was giving him dirty
looks the whole time!"

"I did no such thing!" Ayeka replied.

"Oh, right," said Ryoko. "That's just the way you look all the
time,"

"Grrr!" Ayeka snarled, running forward only to be tripped up by
Washu's outstretched arm. "Hey, what was that for?"

"You two are acting like children!" Washu frowned upon them, and
then with a wave of her hands her smile had returned. "In times of
crisis, do what I do!"

"Act condescending and kick everyone in the shins?" Ryoko asked.

"No," Washu said. "Have faith in yourself and those around you. A
little confidence goes a long way,"

"But Washu," replied Ryoko. "You're always way too confident in
yourself, and never anybody else,"

"What's that, Ryoko?" Washu cupped a hand to her ear. "You want
your shins kicked?"

"Never mind," Ryoko frowned. The noise had gotten much closer, but
whoever was producing it was still nowhere to be seen. Ryoko turned her
head skywards. "Hey, you! The guy who got us into this mess! What's
going on? What's that noise we're hearing?"

"Just the sound of your impending doom," the figure's voice
echoed. "Of course, it has no real form as of yet. I'm having to
scour your memories for the most feared entity from your past, then
I'll create a replicant of it and have it destroy you all. It's so
much more fun that way,"

"What does he mean by that, Washu?" Tenchi asked.

"Stop asking her for all the answers!" the voice snapped.
"That's cheating!"

"I think what he means is," said Washu. "He's looking through
Ryoko's past to find the one person or thing that Ryoko fears the
most, and when he finds it he'll have it come out of that doorway."

"The thing I fear the most?" Ryoko shuddered. "Damn, that could be
any number of things. I hope he doesn't somehow throw a lack of
alcohol through the doorway. Man, that could be deadly,"

"Ohhh, I've seen this movie!" Mihoshi gasped, huddling closer to
Ryoko. "Whatever you do, don't think of the Stay Puft Marshmallow
Man!"

"What's a Stay Puft Marshmallow Man?" Ryoko asked.

"I said don't think about it!" Mihoshi squealed nervously. "I
don't wanna get covered in gunge!"

"This is a potentially very dangerous situation we're in," Washu said.

"Understatement of the year," Kiyone mumbled. "Ryoko, you must
have some ideas as to what we're about to face. After all, it is your
mind he's searching. Tell us what it could be, and we could perhaps
devise a strategy before it's too late,"

"Well," said Ryoko. "There's not all that much that I'm afraid
of. The only thing that really comes to mind is. no, but it couldn't
be that,"

"What?" Tenchi asked. "Ryoko, it could be anything,"

"It wouldn't be. there's absolutely no way." said Ryoko, who
seemed to be trying to convince herself more than she was the rest of
them.

"Ryoko, spit it out!" Ayeka ordered.

"Here it comes," Washu said, watching as the shape in the doorway
slowly took form. The footsteps became so close that they might have
been on top of them, and at long last Ryoko's greatest fears were
realized in that dark room.

"It can't be!" Washu gasped.

"No!" Tenchi grabbed the Light-Hawk Sword instinctively.

"I knew it," hissed Ryoko, her lower lip trembling with trepidation.
"It's him."

The figure's golden eyes burned brightly with dim recollection, as the
light from the doorway passed across its pale, slender skull. It
glowered at them through ribboned strands of all too familiar
symmetrical grey hair that meandered down its back with voluminously
wicked beauty. He spread his arms wide and grinned through cragged fangs
of sick pleasure, his nose upturned in disdain.

"Kagato!" Mihoshi wailed. "Oh, Ryoko, why didn't you think of
the marshmallow man?!"

"This can't be happening, this can't be happening," Ryoko
chanted to herself, cowering on the floor and shaking. "I thought
I'd got away from him, I thought I'd got away, I thought."

"Little Washu," Tenchi said, standing between the girls and the
evil, masterful figure of Kagato. "Any ideas?"

"Hmm," Washu said, finding it impossible to think but wanting to
mask her total paralysis from the others. All she could do was stare at
Kagato, who exuded absolute terror in those around him, as he stepped
into their spotlight. "Um, wait a second,"

"Huh?" Tenchi said, turning to look at the little genius. "What is
it?"

"What's wrong with this picture?" Washu asked, the tiny traces of
fear gone from her voice as she invited them all to look at Kagato.

"Um, Washu, it's Kagato," Kiyone said. "The most. feared.
uh. um. heh. heheh. heh!"

"Haaaahaahaahaha!" Sasami began to laugh right along with Mihoshi
and Kiyone, who had now collapsed on the floor in riotous fits of
sniggering and snorting.

"What's so funny.?!" Ryoko asked, moving her arms away from her
face. Even Tenchi had to bite his bottom lip to stifle his laughter.
"What's everyone find so amusing?"

"Ryoko, look!" Washu chuckled as she pointed at Kagato as if he were
some badly put together television skit. "Look at what he's wearing!"

"What else would he be wearing?" Ryoko frowned, as she peered at her
greatest fear. Then, even she began to guffaw and chortle. "Anything
but that, I guess!"

Kagato stared at them through his shades (which appeared quite
inappropriate considering how dark the room was), and shifted in the
white sweater upon which the word GAP was printed in heavy lettering.
Readjusting his baseball cap to make sure it was on properly (in
reverse, it would seem), he snapped his fingers and activated some
hidden loudspeakers which began to pump forward generic rap
pseudo-rhythms, complete with interspersed and overblown edits where
foul language would usually be placed. Strangely, he noted as he checked
to make sure his jeans were still baggy enough, this didn't seem to
make his entrance any more dramatic, as his future victims continued to
laugh right along with his act. Exasperated (but still keeping it real,
he might add), he resorted to what was originally to be his grand
finale, as he plucked the revolver from its placement down the front of
his baggy jeans, and with little or no accuracy whatsoever he pointed it
at his foes.

"Yo, what up, bitch?!" Kagato said.

No, this didn't seem to be working at all.

**

Washu sat alone in the waiting room, though the room itself was filled
with people. She didn't want to acknowledge their presence, for she
felt so ashamed of herself at that time that it was all she could think
of. She couldn't even bring herself to look over at Marihito, who was
stood ready with his invention for the seventh time in as many years.
All she could do was stare at her own invention, which was disguised by
a white length of cloth just like everybody else's so that it would
all be a big surprise when the time came for the unveiling. She noticed
the unsightly similarities to the shape of the disfigured folds that
covered her own invention, and Marihito's.

"Hey, Washu," one of the students said to her as they passed.
"I'd wish you luck, but it's not like you're gonna need it,"

"Yeah," Washu sighed.

For the past six years she'd been the top student, winning every prize
and achieving every goal that she set out to accomplish. This year, a
hollow feeling had come over her when the time came to start work on her
latest revolutionary invention. At first she thought it was simply that
she'd grown tired of winning. But it wasn't that; she loved winning,
it made her so proud of her abilities and to be able to share them with
the world. It was so exhilarating to stand up on the podium and look
into the TV cameras and flashing lights and thank them all, and give her
creation unto the world. It meant so much to her that she could do that,
and that everyone cherished her contributions. But now she had this
feeling of emptiness whenever she tried to think of a new design, a new
advancement in Jurai tech. She knew exactly from where it stemmed.

During the seven years she'd known him, Marihito had continued to try
and be more like her. Everything he did, and everything he said, was a
near perfect imitation of herself. It was as if he saw her as some kind
of paragon of perfection that he had to base himself upon. She had no
idea as to how she could let him in on how flawed she was, and how she
didn't appreciate nor was she able to approve of what he was doing.
until now.

She had been working in the laboratory, which she had painstakingly
improved upon over the years with Marihito by her side, when she had
come across Marihito's invention wedged behind one of the many
capacious closets filled with equipment. In actuality, it had only been
a part of his invention for the whole thing hadn't yet been
constructed. But going by his technique and the shape of the machine, it
wasn't hard for Washu with her unmeasured discursive faculties to
figure out just what it was and what it would eventually come to be.
Working day and night, she attempted to recreate the impression she had
gotten from it in physical form; she didn't even let Marihito in on
the fact that she was basically mimicking his designs. It was out of
sheer whimsy that she wanted to know the function of his invention
before a year had gone by. Can a girl help it if she's naturally
curious?

At long last, she had sat across the table from the replica she had
constructed from simple thought. Making sure Marihito was suitably
distracted in another part of the Academy, she dimmed the lights and
flipped the green switches on the side of the spherical chamber, and
entered the codes she had chosen at random (her only real contribution
to the project). To her fulfilment, the entire machine came to life.
Flashing lights and electronic beeps and buzzes filled the room, and
surely enough the chamber opened and invited her inside.

The simulation chamber. What a masterpiece Marihito had created, she
thought to herself. The art of converting light and electricity into
solid fantasies, in which you could take on any role you so preferred.
It was a wonder to behold, and the possibilities seemed endless. She
wanted to try it out. but she felt guilty using Marihito's machine.

Was it really Marihito's machine, though? After all, she had created
it first. She had continued to look at his version as it grew behind the
closet every night, and the more Marihito added to it the less efficient
it seemed to become. It was inadequate in comparison to the version she
alone had created. Alone.

No, she hadn't done it alone. She had taken his idea and copied it,
that was all. She looked at herself in the dim luminescence that the
simulation chamber gave off, and she saw what she was doing. She had
almost been swept up by the temptation of entering Marihito's project
as her own, only as a much more advanced and sufficiently operative
equivalent, under the pretense that she was merely improving upon his
vision for the benefit of the entire universe. It wasn't that at all,
though. She just felt green with envy that Marihito had come so close to
such a bountiful design before she had. She felt sick to her stomach
that this was what she had become.

"But wait," she had said to herself, returning from her stupor and
taking another look at the chamber. "This is the ideal way to show him
that I'm not perfect,"

Her idea had seemed so simple. Long before she had begun to feel the
shreds of guilt she now felt sitting along in the waiting room, she had
decided to go ahead and enter her version of the chamber, only with one
crucial difference. She would purposefully redesign it so that it would
be a lesser model when placed next to Marihito's, and while he
continued to work on his own design, she would add untraceable
improvements to it that increased the efficiency of his model to a
certain extent. This way, he would easily defeat her in the contest and
the invention would be taken to heart by Jurai's science council, and
Marihito would be hailed for the true talent that he was. On the down
side, it meant her reputation would be tarnished a little bit, because
she would basically have let everyone know that she had copied his idea.
But she felt confident enough in her abilities that she knew she would
be able to make up for it in the long run.

"Yes!" she had cheered in that empty laboratory. "This is how it'll
be!"

Now, she felt a lot less enthusiastic about it. She stared through the
folds of the overlapping cloth, hiding her scheme from public eye for
until tonight. She wondered if Marihito could tell that it was the exact
same shape as his, and for the first time that day she looked in his
direction. He seemed so nervous, as if everything were riding on the
result of tonight's contest. It was strange, he'd never been nervous
for the contests before; he'd always seemed so calm and collected in
the previous years. She trotted around a few other bulky inventions that
many other students were claiming as sure-fire winners, and sidled over
to where her friend was seated.

"Hey there," Washu smiled wryly, patting him on the shoulder to get
his attention. "You look nervous, kid. What's up?"

"Oh, hi Washu," said Marihito. "Just tension, I guess,"

She felt bad for talking to him when she was consciously betraying his
trust. But she felt it needed to be done to show him just how wasteful
it was to throw away his social life just to spend more time around her
and imitating her and loving her from afar. After all, love must have
been what this was all about. He loved her so much that he wanted to be
a solid part of her life, never changing and always present. She wished
she could tell him that none of that was necessary, that he could just
be himself and she'd care for him just as much. He was like a lost
child hanging onto her because he had nothing else. But that was all his
doing, he refused to socialize with anyone but her. Many times had she
encouraged him to meet other girls, but he often reacted as if she were
trying to get rid of him, and she had no choice but to take back what
she said. Was it so wrong to want him to be as happy as possible?

"I really think you're going to win tonight, Marihito," she said,
solemnly. "You mark my words, at the end of the day you'll be up
there thanking them for the award and everything'll be so great.
They'll have a shuttle parked right outside to take you to the
fanciest restaurant in town where you'll celebrate!"

"Thanks, Washu," Marihito replied. He didn't seem to care.

"What? You don't believe me?" asked Washu, poking him on the nose.
He sighed and turned away from her. She wondered if he knew about her
plan. no, there's no way he could have known. She'd told nobody
about it. "C'mon now, I'm serious. I think you have a good chance
of winning,"

"I know," Marihito nodded. "And I think so too. I think I'm
going to win,"

"That's great!" Washu laughed, waving her arms in an attempt to
brighten the poor kid up a little. "Be confident in yourself!"

"Yeah," Marihito said quietly. He hadn't even looked at her the
whole time they'd been talking. Washu wanted to ask him if he knew.
no, she wanted to tell him her plan. apologize to him for it and
decline from entering the contest out of sheer dishonor.

"Marihito." she began. "There's something I should-."

"Attention!" one of the loudspeakers in the top right corner of the
waiting room came into action with a hubbub of static and interference.
"Will all entrants in tonight's contest please report to the
backstage area. The ceremony is about to start, so hand your inventions
in to the stagehand on your left and queue up in an orderly fashion
behind curtain number one,"

"That's us," Marihito said, standing up and tending to his invention.

"Yeah," Washu replied. "Hey, want me to help you through with your
invention?"

"No, that's okay," Marihito declined her offer. "I think I want
to stick around here for a while to get my bearings together. you go
right ahead,"

Slowly the entire gathering of students and their accompanying canvas-
covered inventions made their way through the large double doors in the
southern wall. Handing their entries in to the cute stagehand, each
student made their way into the backstage area. Through the intricately
patterned curtains they could hear the faint warbles of the announcers
and the tinny, stimulated applause of the housed audience as the staging
area came to life in preparation for the contestants. One by one, a
student was plucked from the enormous group to stand beside their
invention that had been wheeled out by the stagehand and be given a
score from the judges on hand. It was nerve wracking to watch each
student go out and get a mediocre score. Washu had never gotten one of
those before. Would she get one tonight? She wondered how she'd face
the rest of the school after they discovered she was a cheater. a fraud.

"It has to be done," she whispered. "For my friend,"

She turned to see Marihito finally make his way into the backstage area
behind her. She cast a smile his way, but he refused to return it. Washu
couldn't tell if he was just too nervous, or if he really did suspect
her of trickery. It must have been nerves, because she knew that,
despite being an overly obsessive one, he was still too good of a friend
to keep his true feelings from her. If he suspected her, he would have
called her up on it. Looking him over for the last time before she would
be called out (they were already starting the "Six time consecutive
winner" fanfare that they had awarded her after last years dazzling
display of genius), she smiled to herself. After today, it would all be
so easy for him. People would respect him, he'd be able to break away
from her side and go out on his own, confident in his abilities not just
as an inventor, but as a person. That was what attracted him to her, his
lack of confidence. Like a moth attracted to a light bulb, he hovered
around her because she was so radiant with self-reliance and assurance.
But after he went through that curtain, he'd come out the other side a
changed man.

"Please welcome, Washu Hakubi!" the black-suited announcer bellowed
into his microphone, as the audience began to go nuts in appreciation of
her talents. Bashfully, she stepped out onto the stage and waved at them
all, pointing at her own head as if she had no idea they were clapping
for her.

"Hi! Hello there! Hiya! How's everybody today?" she chirped as she
grabbed the microphone from the host. "Ready to see me win this thing?"

"Uh, heh," the host said as he took the microphone from her, the
crowd reaction for Washu's forced confidence was immense, and he had
to wait for it to die down before he could continue. "Washu, why
don't you let us know what you have in store for us this year?"

"Oh," Washu said, taking the microphone once more and shuffling over
to where her invention stood, still covered by the white canvas. She
winked at all the TV cameras, which must have been broadcasting this
across half the galaxy. She wanted to make her humility last as long as
possible when it was revealed that she'd cheated for the contest, for
with every bit of abasement she suffered, Marihito would simply rise in
status. "How about if I just showed it to you?"

Blowing kisses to all the cameras, she yanked the canvas away and put
her invention on display. The spectators gave out a collective gasp as
she placed a hand on the simulation chamber, inviting the host to take a
gander at it.

"Fascinating," the host said, nodding to the judges as he studied
the invention as closely as possible without actually activating it.
"It appears to be some kind of booth that one might enter, and upon
doing so connect themselves up to a mainframe that accurately displays
vivid depictions of pre-programmed simulated environments and
situations. Washu has managed to harness and perfect the art of
simulation to a fine degree! It's genius, ladies and gentlemen! Pure
genius!"

"Who, me?" Washu giggled, snatching the microphone once again as the
audience went into rambunctious bouts of applause. She stood on her toes
and waved at them all as the judges awarded her with yet another set of
straight tens.

"And now, for our next and final contestant." the host began, then
he turned to Washu and lowered his voice. "You might as well stay on
hand, you're our winner for sure,"

"Well, I probably shouldn't." Washu replied. She didn't want
to be around to see the betrayal etched on Marihito's face, but as she
turned to look at the curtain she saw Marihito making his way to the
stage. So, instead, she just stood beside the host and looked on as they
replaced her stolen invention with Marihito's own, smiling as if she
had no prior knowledge of what was about to unfold.

"Please welcome last year's runner up," the host went on, speaking
into the microphone once more. "Marihito Inohuto,"

There was moderate crowd reaction for Marihito as he finally made his
way up to the stand and acknowledged those who were cheering for him. He
glanced at Washu through the corner of his eye, and she could only stare
back. By now he must have realized what she had done, and it killed her
to be standing right there. But she couldn't walk away from it. She
had to face up to it, to show quite rightly that he had to move on, he
had to be able to forget her.

"Now, Marihito," the host continued. "Every year you enter this
thing and you always come up short. what have you got for us this year
that you think's gonna propel you to the next level?"

"Well," Marihito said, walking over to his invention with the
microphone in his hand. "Just like Washu did, I think I'll let the
invention speak for itself,"

He dropped the canvas, and his eyes widened in shock as he saw that his
invention seemed to look exactly like Washu's had. At first, Washu was
puzzled by his reaction, but then she told herself it must have just
been the result of his disappointment in her mixed with the thrill of
being about to finally destroy her undefeated streak.

"Um," the host coughed, as the audience stared on in silence. To
them, it appeared to be the same invention. "Do you mind explaining
yourself?"

"Uh," Marihito stuttered. "I, uh, it. it's not. uh."

"This appears to be an exact duplicate of Washu's invention," the
host frowned, starting forward and beckoning security to come over to
where they were standing. Washu panicked and rushed forward to save
Marihito from being expelled from the contest before he was even given a
shot.

"Wait, wait!" she grabbed the microphone once more and blushed as
all the faces and cameras in the room turned to fix their attention upon
her. There was total silence, as even security had paused mid-step to
hear what she had to say. "Uh. it's not what it seems! His
invention is better than mine!"

"Washu, ma'am, what are you doing?" the host hissed in her ear.
"This boy has clearly copied your designs,"

"No. no, that's precisely what didn't happen!" Washu said into
the microphone, unaware that the host's voice hadn't been picked up
on it. "You see, his invention. it's better than mine! In lots of
different ways! His is the better design! Believe me!"

Marihito stood there, unable to move. All he could see were the TV
cameras and countless people staring at him expectantly, waiting for an
explanation. Washu turned to him and grabbed him by the hand.

"It's okay," she told him. "It'll be okay."

He stared back at her. His eyes looked like hollow sockets in the
lighting, for she realized the spotlights were still all fixed on her
and none of them on him.

"Look!" Washu exclaimed to the public, turning to Marihito's
invention and pressing a few specific buttons and knobs. "My invention
isn't as efficient as his. You have to believe me, it's the truth.
His is the better design! He did a much better job than I did. Look,
look. look, if I tried to enter a program of magnitude X times the
exponential result of the amount of energy produced by a typical
simulation, my version of the chamber would just short-circuit! His, on
the other hand."

The familiar groan of dying circuitry reverberated about the staging
area as she entered the key codes in vain. Looking up, she saw to her
complete bemusement that the chamber she had actually improved upon
herself to give Marihito a much greater chance at winning had indeed
short-circuited.

"I don't. understand," she said into the microphone, the shock
in her voice sent via airwaves to every major city within a twenty
thousand light-year radius. Audiences around the galaxy watched as she
turned from the now powerless chamber to the podium and the severely
angry host.

"Washu." Marihito whispered. "What did you."

"Well, I understand!" the host nodded as he produced a second
microphone, calling security over once more. "It seems Marihito
Yamamoto here decided it would be much easier to cheat his way to
victory than to actually put any effort into his project,"

"What?!" Washu gasped as she dropped her microphone and rushed over.
"No, no! No!"

"Pitiful," the host sneered down at Marihito, who was still
paralysed as the security agents grabbed hold of him. "You were fully
aware of the rules of the contest, yet you proceeded to break them. You
have shown how little you respect this fine institute, my boy,"

The host turned to the cameras, as grave an expression on his face as
Washu had ever seen in her life. She stared on helplessly, as the agents
shook Marihito about to try and get some form of emotion out of him for
the cameras to capture. It failed, and he kept on his blank mask of
subdued feelings of betrayal and fear. Fear of what was about to happen
to him. Even Washu felt it.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the host said, addressing the people.
"What we have here is a man who would rather disgrace the honor of the
Imperial Science Academy to no end, simply to add a shiny trophy to his
collection. Punishment for attempting to defraud the council in such a
manner consists of absolute withdrawal of the offender from the Science
Academy. He will be stricken from our roster as of this moment, and
given a shuttle to the nearest outpost where he will no doubt disgrace
any other sanctuary he finds with his regardless lack of respect,"

"You can't do this!" Washu cried, rushing from one point to
another in an attempt to fix that which she had somehow screwed up so
badly. She rushed over to Marihito and grabbed him by the sides of his
uniform. "Marihito, tell them it was your idea! Tell them you didn't
cheat!"

"You've always been better than me, haven't you, Washu," he said.

"What.?" she asked. She felt as if the whole room was spinning
haphazardly and she was stuck in the middle, perfectly still. She
watched the security agents drag Marihito away, his feet scuffing the
floor as he hung limp in their arms. His eyes were the only things that
moved on his body, as they followed Washu the whole time he was being
pulled from her side. One of her predictions had come true, when he left
this room he would be a different man. he wouldn't even be a man
anymore. He would be a failure. And he wouldn't even have her to cry
to. She staggered over to the host and looked to him through unblinking
eyes. "You have to believe me. I was the cheat, not him. I cheated.
I'm telling you, it was me,"

The host put his microphone to one side and placed a hand on her thigh,
off- camera. She grunted uncomfortably but put up with its lecherous
position just so she could hear what he had to say to her.

"Even if it wasn't him," the host whispered softly. "Do you
think the public wants to see you as a cheater? Washu, you have a
future! You're a genius, and really very beautiful. The public likes
you. You're a cult figure! If you were to turn out to be a cheat."

"So that's what this is about," Washu frowned. "How the Science
Academy is perceived by the public. If the girl they've been
supporting all this time turns out to be a potential cheater, you guys
would look bad. it's all about public image."

"Hey," the host said. "You're the genius, not me,"

Washu could see it all so clearly now. All these achievements, all the
awards, all the contests and the public appearances; they'd all been
an attempt by the Science Academy to show off the girl that they'd
been grooming like a prized animal. They were using her wisdom and
superior intellect as a means to boast, and a way to make themselves
more popular. She could see how sick and two-faced every member of the
council was, standing behind their desks and applauding her. Her
intelligence was just their tool to make themselves look more inviting,
and her face was something to slap on posters so they'd get more
students to sign up. Washu felt like just walking out on the whole
thing, to find Marihito and help him get himself sorted out so that he
could be all that she knew he could be. he was helpless without her.
He needed her. She could just leave right now and be with him, away from
the muck that piled so high in this Academy of fools. Turning to leave,
she cursed the very day she had entered this place.

"And the winner is," the host said, taking a sealed envelope from
one of the judges who plodded back to his chair and watched the crowd
eat it all up. "Washu!"

Washu paused and looked around. The people were going nuts for her,
chanting "Seven times!" in recognition of her new achievement. The
lights flashed and the TV cameras whirred, as no doubt entire planets
were celebrating right along with that room.

And there, at that very moment, she saw exactly what the Science Academy
had been seeing for the past seven years. In her own reflection, she saw
all the people that hung on every well thought out word she used, every
cutesy mannerism she'd perfected, and every masterpiece she created.
The host's words "You're the genius, not me," rang in her ears,
and without knowing what she was doing she found herself right back at
the podium, accepting the seventh golden award like this that she'd
ever held in her hands. She looked into the sea of eyes and saw a world
to help improve with her knowledge, the very reason she'd become a
scientist in the first place. To help all these people cultivate their
mental fields and yield answers that people had tried for centuries to
come one step closer to finding the questions to. To watch the universe
blossom and flow like a river, its diamond tributaries so beautiful it
brought tears to her eyes.

That was why she was crying.

It must have been.

Marihito.

Who was Marihito?

He was a dream she'd had and then forgotten about.

"Thank you," she said into the microphone. "All of you,"

She had nothing else to say.

**

"Stop laughing at my creation!" the Washu duplicate flew down on its
platform and glared at them all. They couldn't stop themselves from
laughing, and had thrown themselves backward onto the surprisingly
comfortable flooring of the dark room and were kicking their legs in the
air from the sheer comedy of Kagato's new attire. It wasn't the
desired effect he'd had in mind. "Stop it!"

"Ohhhh man!" Ryoko guffawed, sitting up and pointing in the
direction of her supposed nemesis. "What is the deal with that?
Why'd he come out dressed so stupid and acting so funny?"

"What are you talking about?" the figure asked, looking to Kagato.
"You mean this isn't your greatest fear.?"

"No! It's damn funny!" Ryoko laughed, ignoring the gun Kagato had
aimed at them all. If his aim were anything like his dress sense, it was
nothing to worry about.

"Curses," the figure muttered, bringing up a screen of text in front
of him. Every so often his voice would change from that of Washu's
buoyant personality to a more warped, frustrated grating tone that
implied his masculinity. "It seems that I'm unable to present
Ryoko's truest fears if she's not willingly under my control.
She's too aware of the program for me to pry open her mind and pluck a
reliable image of this. Kagato guy. The inaccuracy level is way too
high,"

"Hold up, hold up," Kagato said, his smooth, snake-like voice a
total contrast to the dialect he was using. "What this foo' saying?
I oughtta ice y'all for laughin' at my duds. Punk ass bitches,"

"Haaaahahahaha!" Ryoko laughed.

"What did he say?" Sasami asked. "Man, there's no way anybody
could understand that sorta talk!"

"Mia!" Ryo-ohki said.

"You're right, Ryo-ohki, he is funny looking," Sasami nodded.

"Okay, enough talk!" the figure scowled, punching a button and
erasing the screen from existence. "My creation must still be capable
of destroying all of you! Kagato, kill those insects!"

"Yo, yo, peace," said Kagato, making strange hand signals in the air
that none of them could comprehend. "Peace out, man, I ain't killin'
nobody, I'm just keepin' it real. Check it, my rhymes is phat,
livin' it larger than life, homey,"

". What?" the figure snapped.

"Speak English, foo'!" Kagato shrugged. "You ain't gots da
stuff to order me 'round, boy, I kick you downtown in mah hood, I pop
a cap in yo' ass from the S to the O to the J to the A, brother.
Whassup wit dat?"

". Something about a cat?" the figure blinked, attempting to
translate the language Kagato was using.

"I think he's saying he doesn't want to fight us," said Kiyone.
"And, uh, word,"

"Riiiiiight," Kagato smiled in approval. "That girl know!"

"Ugh," the figure groaned, slumping forward on his metallic throne.
"Just when my plan was coming to fruition, this had to happen.
I've waited so very long to have you in my grasp,"

"It's been a long time," Washu said. She hadn't been laughing
along with them, but had been standing to one side with her back turned
to the hilarious spectacle. She had, instead, been pondering the
memories that had resurfaced in her mind while they'd been on this
rescue mission. "Hasn't it, Marihito?"

"So. you remember," the figure looked down at her. "Excellent,
that means my vengeance will be all the more delicious,"

"Washu, what's going on?" Tenchi asked, turning to her.

"Haaahaaa. hoo boy. huh?" Ryoko blinked. "You know this guy?"

"You could say we were acquainted at one point," the figure said,
hovering lower with every word. "Until she decided she'd rather
choose fame over loyalty,"

"A'ight," said Kagato.

"You shouldn't have dragged everyone else into this," Washu said,
standing her ground. "It's me you want, so let them go,"

"Miss Washu?" Ayeka asked.

"Miaow?" Ryo-ohki squeaked.

"You know," the figure replied. "That's not a bad idea,"

To Washu's surprise (for as far as she knew, this was the first time
an evil villain had actually acted on such a request), everyone except
herself suddenly vanished. She was left alone in that dark room, which
was gradually getting darker. Even the light on her body was fading, and
she had to keep her wits about her. She was afraid that the figure might
strike at any second.

"Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh," the figure, which now sounded like Marihito
had when she'd known him, laughed an evil laugh. "Can you see me?
Mwahahaha! I bet you can't. finally, we're alone together. I can
do whatever I want to you."

"Why that foo' turn out the lights?" she heard Kagato ask. "That
sucka be dead once I find him in all dis black shiznit,"

"Oh, be quiet," Marihito said, snapping his fingers. "There, NOW
we're alone,"

"What did you do with them?" Washu asked.

"I set them free," replied Marihito. "Just like you asked me to.
Isn't that what friends are for?"

"How do I know I can trust you?" Washu asked. "For all I know, you
destroyed them and just pretended that you set them free,"

A projected image appeared in front of Washu as she spoke. It depicted
Tenchi, Sasami, Kiyone, Ryoko, Mihoshi, Ayeka, and Ryo-ohki all in her
lab outside the simulation chamber. They seemed to be fine.

"That could be fake, too!" Washu shouted. "You could have
simulated my laboratory and put them in it to make them believe they'd
been released,"

"Now, Washu, you know that's impossible," Marihito chuckled, a
slyness to his voice like she'd never heard before. What had happened
to him? Why had he become so evil and hell-bent on revenge? "This
simulation was being run via Ryoko's memories. The duplications I was
producing from her mind were becoming vastly inaccurate, like you saw in
Kagato. I couldn't possibly reproduce an entire laboratory and have it
look so genuine,"

"That's why you had to destroy the landscape," Washu muttered,
looking around. "It was becoming to unstable, too inaccurate,"

"Still the genius I always knew," Marihito said. His voice sounded
much closer, and Washu found herself spinning around trying to catch a
glimpse of him.

"But if you were using Ryoko to create this simulation," she said.
"Then where are we now? Without her brain connected to the simulation
chamber's mainframe. we must be."

"Just a random series of numbers and letters," Marihito said for
her. "Floating around in the circuits of my invention. why, at any
time, we could just disappear out of existence, if I so chose,"

"Marihito," Washu sighed. "Don't."

"Oh, don't worry," Marihito laughed. "There's still plenty of
fun to be had, so I'm not going to destroy you just yet. I want to see
you suffer like I had to,"

"Show yourself," Washu said through gritted teeth. "Please,
Marihito. Stop playing these games and reveal yourself to me,"

"Sounds like an offer I can't refuse," replied Marihito.

There was a gust of simulated wind, and Marihito appeared before her.
But he looked far different compared to how had she remembered him. In
fact, he didn't even look like the same person. There before her, in
all his chubby glory, stood the strikingly familiar manifestation of her
one and only Jerry.

"Wh.?" Washu gasped, stumbling backwards.

"Don't be afraid, Washu," Jerry chuckled, evil resonating from his
features. "It'll all make sense once you listen to what I have to
say. You see, after life basically crapped all over me, I decided to
become an evil genius, just like in those comics I read. It was so
simple!"

Washu rushed forward and punched the apparition so hard that it rocked
backwards on its tubby feet, only to roll forwards once more and clock
her in the face with its inflated gut.

"Bastard!" Washu snapped as she punched the figure of Jerry with
rampant energy. "Did you think I was born yesterday? You think I
don't remember entering Jerry's personality before all this
happened?! Who the Hell do you think you're screwing with here?!"

"Whoa, calm down," Jerry said, his body slowly morphing to something
more diminutive. "You can't blame me for trying,"

"I should kill you for that," Washu snarled.

"Now now, don't get so agitated," the figure soothed with mock
concern. "After all, if you did manage to kill me it would sever what
small connection you did have to this simulation, and since there's no
way for you to travel back to the real world unless I let you."

"You bastard," Washu hissed. "You set this up. Now that Ryoko
isn't mentally in control of the simulation, the only way I can escape
now is through you."

"Bingo," the figure cackled as he finished his transformation.

It was like looking into herself. Everything about him was, in a way, an
exact likeness of her body. His hair conformed to the shape of her own,
only a much richer brown shade that appeared reddish around the edges as
a sort of hint towards the color of her own. Through devilishly
mischievous expression, he winked at her with both his trapezoid shaped
eyeballs and sprang about with cruel delight. Even the Science Academy
uniform he now bore was identical to the regulation outfit she wore, a
higher class from the Graduate School that he had never actually
attained. His skin tone and his figure were as childlike as hers were,
and he appeared to be only twelve years old. Though she had never seen
him at that age, she could tell this wasn't how he had looked. This
was just a mirage he was using to degrade her own pursuit for innocence
even in wisdom.

"Miss me? Miss me?" he grinned, and slapped her full across the face
before finishing the schoolyard rhyme that seemed grotesquely distorted
coming from him. "Now you have to kiss me!"

**

"What happened?" Sasami asked, rubbing her eyes and looking about
the chamber. As Washu had envisioned, they had all appeared back inside
the laboratory without the slightest idea as to how it had come to pass.
"The last thing I remember, we were in a big dark room with Kagato
and. hey, where's Washu?"

"Yeah, where is she?" Ryoko looked around, still rather dopey from
their experience.

"Here!" Ayeka called from beside a vertically placed, steamy glass
tube that stood wedged in one of the western walls of the chamber.
Tenchi was standing beside the princess, gazing eagerly into the tube
along with her. "She's still in here!"

The others all rushed over to the two of them, and stared into the steam
filled tube. Indeed, Washu was stood inside, strapped down to whatever
electronic machinery had enabled them to enter the simulation through
Ryoko's mental energy. She appeared to be in some sort of hypnotic
trance, much like Ryoko had been when they'd found her plugged into
the simulator as they had each arrived in the lab. Something didn't
seem right.

"You know," said Kiyone. "If Washu were out here rather than in
there, she'd probably have a perfectly good explanation for all this,"

"Doesn't anybody know what's going on?" Ryoko asked. "Tenchi,
did Washu say anything to you about any of this?"

"I'm as in the dark as you are," Tenchi replied as he stared into
the lifeless, doll-like eyes of the once so lively genius. "The last
thing she said to that crazed figure was to let us all go. and then
here we were,"

"Maybe she's just taking a shower?" said Mihoshi, rather glumly.

"Isn't there any way to open this thing from the outside?" Ryoko
asked, prodding and yanking at the glass. "Grr! Open, damn it!"

"When Washu put us in there, she used one of these buttons," Ayeka
said, looking over one of the many, many control panels to the side of
the various tubes. "Then the doors just opened for us. oh, but they
all look the same, there's no way I could find the right one,"

"Move over, princess," Ryoko grunted, shoving Ayeka out of the way
and checking out the panels for herself. Without warning, she began
pressing different buttons at random in quick succession, not stopping
to see what effect they had. "It's gotta be one of these!"

"Ryoko!" Tenchi snapped. "Stop it, you might set something off!"

"And what's the alternative?" Ryoko asked, turning to look at him
while she kept on pressing. "Watch her stay trapped in there for good
until one of us gets the guts to do something? I don't know about you,
but I want her out of there, and I'm not waiting around for some
guardian angel to appear out of nowhere and give us all the answers!"

"Did somebody call?" a voice buzzed into life, as one of the buttons
Ryoko had pressed caused a monitor above them to flicker into life. On
it was displayed the familiar face of their very own resident scientist,
Washu. It spoke to them through garbled tones of twangs and crackles, as
interference popped and crackled about the animated image at intervals.
"Guardian angel, at your service,"

"Washu.? Is that you?" Tenchi asked, gaping at the screen.

"Miss Washu!" Sasami cheered.

"Not quite," the image replied. "I'm simply an accurate
representation of. the greatest scientific genius in the universe!
Created by yours truly, y'know, heh-heh,"

"That's her, alright," grumbled Ryoko. "Makes about as much
sense as her, anyway,"

"Ahahaha!" the image laughed.

"What's going on, Washu?" Kiyone asked.

"Um, could you be more specific?" the image of Washu frowned.
"There's so much going on right now in the universe, it almost makes
me feel insignificant. But I'm not, so ha! Take that, universe,"

"I don't understand," Mihoshi said, to everyone's surprise (no,
really!). "If Washu's in that shower thingy, how come we're seeing
her on that screen?"

"It's quite simple, Mihoshi," Washu's image said. "I'm a
stored personality, just in case the real Washu happens to be
unavailable or, by form of some bizarre accident, she loses some of her
intelligence. as if that could ever happen! I'm basically here to
help anyone out who strolls into my lab and needs assistance with
something,"

"Oh, like that animated paperclip thingy!" Mihoshi giggled. "He's
cute,"

"No, nothing like that," Washu's image glared. "Clippit is an
inferior being,"

"Oh," Mihoshi whimpered.

"So, you can tell us anything we need to know?" Kiyone asked.

"Mmm-hmm!" Washu's image nodded. It really had Washu's
expressions perfected. "Just as long as you're not looking for my
secret stash of carrots. I know how curious Ryo-ohki gets,"

"Mia," Ryo-ohki sniffled.

"Washu, there's been a big mishap!" said Tenchi. "Something's
going on, and we're not sure what,"

"We were trapped in a simulation," Ayeka interjected. "Trying to
rescue your bothersome daughter, no less!"

"Hrrmm," Ryoko grumbled, choosing to ignore Ayeka's comments for
the moment. "Anyway, then we found ourselves out here, but it looks
like you're still inside one of these tubes,"

"I see," Washu's image seemed to be contemplating matters. "Oh
my, that's not good,"

"What's not good?" asked Tenchi, worriedly.

"It seems that Washu's mind is being somehow kept afloat inside the
chamber's mainframe even after your simulation has concluded,"
Washu's image explained. Even she seemed nervous. "There must be
some sort of interference from within the program at work here.
Normally, as soon as a simulation comes to a halt, the participants are
all ejected from the mainframe so that their minds aren't wiped by the
effects of the simulation starting anew,"

"Washu, what does this mean?" Ayeka asked. Everyone was starting to
get the gruesome picture. "How do we get the real Miss Washu out of
there?"

"I'm afraid any attempts to remove Washu from the mainframe using
force would result in complete loss of function to the brain. We would
lose her in the process," Washu's image sighed.

"Then we'll have to go back in and help her!" Tenchi said.

"I'm sorry," said Washu's image. "She is in no definable part
of the mainframe. I cannot locate her brain patterns, nor can I allow
any of you to try and re-enter the simulation,"

"Why not? Tell us, please!" Ayeka cried.

"Miss Washu needs our help!" said Sasami.

"That is precisely why I cannot allow it," Washu's image replied.
"The simulation was being carried mentally by Ryoko. When she left,
the simulation ended, and any attempt to go back inside would start a
new program. replacing and destroying whatever is left of Washu's
consciousness, it would wipe her brain like a slate,"

"There must be something we can do," Kiyone said, desperately.

"Damn it," sighed Tenchi.

"I'm afraid all we can do is hope that whatever presence is keeping
her inside the simulation eventually lets go," Washu's image told
them. "That's all we can do,"

For yet another moment in his life, Tenchi felt totally helpless. So
many times before had he felt it, but never had it been so quiet and
sedated a feeling. He'd felt it when Ryoko had been in the clutches of
Kagato, and he'd felt it whenever Ayeka and Ryoko fought over him.
but now, watching the still motionless figure of Washu hanging in the
pipe like a toy on display, it was so cold and uneventful. With Ryoko,
he had been able to take decisive action. Fighting Kagato face to face
was nothing compared to seeing his friend being slowly sucked away from
them without the ability to do a thing except watch and pray.

Even Ryoko looked to be at her wit's end. She stepped forward and
placed a quivering hand on the glass container that her mother now slept
eternally within. It was like something out of a fairy tale. Leaning
closer to the glass, Ryoko let her hand slide down as to wipe away the
murky condensation that clouded Washu's face. Tenchi wanted to be
there for her; he knew how she felt. Losing a mother under such tragic
circumstances. it was a sensation you couldn't possibly feel by
yourself. If you tried, you'd probably lose your mind as well.

"Mom," Ryoko said, pressing her face against the glass and letting
her tears drip down the side of the tube so they formed a puddle at
their feet. A puddle of emotions that Ryoko had never been able to give
to Washu when she had been with them. Now, it seemed, it was too late.

**

The darkness felt like quicksand to Washu. She stared across at the
hideous figure of Marihito, who laughed with glee in the knowledge that
she was hurting without anyone to turn to. She would have summoned all
her energy just to hurt him right back, but it felt so pointless right
now that she couldn't even begin to do so. It was all over, and this
bitter corner of his invention was the end of the line for her. His plan
had worked; he'd drawn Washu into his world like a fish, using her own
daughter as bait. Now she had no escape, and for all the knowledge she
had at her fingertips, she would have traded it all just to get to say
goodbye to her friends. to her daughter. to Jerry.

"Awww, is the poor baby gonna cry?" Marihito cackled, clasping his
hands together like an infant. "Go right ahead, nothing would please
me more than to see my world flooded with your pain!"

"Just kill me," said Washu. "End it now, that's what you want,"

"Ha!" Marihito laughed. "That wouldn't be anywhere near enough!
Do you have any idea how long I've waited in the darkness to see you
on your knees? Do you have any idea how long I've waited just to let
you know how I feel about you and your pathetic existence? No, I'm not
going to just kill you. I want to see you suffer, I want to FEEL you
suffer, just like you made me suffer all those years ago."

"Marihito," she said, holding her breath. "I'm. sorry,"

"Bullshit!" spat Marihito. "You're not sorry in the least, and I
know it! You knew back then what you were doing, and if you had the
option you'd do it again. Look at you. you're so self-assured,
because you know. and the world knows. that you're a genius.
You're Miss Perfect Pants! Cute as a button and smarter than anybody
else, that's you. Oh, God, how I wish I could have known how selfish
you were back then."

"I was never selfish!" Washu yelled in her own pointless defence.

"No?" Marihito asked. "You mean to tell me you had no idea what
the Academy was building you up for? That you had no clue that you would
become so famous, and so respected, and so prized a possession of the
scientific world? Look around you, you have your own subspace
laboratory, you have everything! Everything that I could have had! You
took it all from ME!"

"That's. completely illogical," Washu frowned, still feeling
weak. "There's no way of knowing that you would have followed the
same path as I would have if you'd won that contest,"

"The only thing stopping me from being in your position was the simple
fact that you happened to exist!" said Marihito, getting more and more
filled with rage. His hair became a tangled jungle of fury that tossed
about his head as he shouted, and his uniform stretched and strained
with every convulsion of hatred. He looked as if he were about to
shatter from the inside. "I always came in second, and it killed me to
have to put up with that! I made an idiot out of myself because of how
incredibly talented you were! It's all your fault, and I defy you to
claim otherwise,"

"So I have to apologize to you for being so great at that stuff?"
Washu coughed.

"Not only that," Marihito fumed. "You have to admit that I'm
right, that everything you became as your life progressed was something
I could have been just as easily if it hadn't been for your
selfishness,"

"You're crazy," said Washu.

"AM I?!" Marihito screamed, slapping Washu again and bringing her
back to her senses a little. "Then tell me, who's to blame for what
happened to me? Thanks to your screwing up my life in front of a
galaxy-wide television audience, I couldn't get my life back together!
Everywhere I looked, people refused to fund my projects or house my
equipment or even listen to my ideas. because they thought of me as a
cheat. That was your fault. Admit it!"

"I was just trying to help you," Washu whimpered, truly feeling
guilty. "I just thought it would help you see that I wasn't all that
special, that you were treating yourself badly just to reduce your
social life to me, and me alone,"

"As if you ever cared about anyone but yourself, either!" said Marihito.

"You don't know anything about who or what I care for," replied
Washu. "All you know is that you think you were gypped out of a free
ride to success, just because I won a stupid contest and made a few
mistakes,"

"A few?!" said Marihito.

"Yes, a few!" Washu restated. "I made a few stupid mistakes! I was
young. We both were. How could you hold that against me your entire life
like that?"

"Because after what you did to me, I had no life!" he replied. His
nose started to drip with globules of greenish liquid, and saliva foamed
at the corners of his mouth as he gnashed out his prosecution. "I had
to sit back and watch as you took all the glory! Do you have any idea
how I felt watching you gain so much, as I lost all I held dear to me? I
couldn't even go back to my family, they wanted nothing to do with me!"

"That was how things were back then," Washu sighed, recalling the
time as best she could in her hazy mind. "Jurai had a hold on almost
everything. If you disrespected Jurai in some shape or form, the Holy
Council equally disrespected your family. In some circles that meant
complete separation of family members in an attempt to regain that
respect. it meant so much back then to be in the favor of Jurai. I'm
sorry you had to live through it,"

"Yeah, well," said Marihito. "Jurai obviously had a great deal of
favor for you and your talents. and selfishly, you used that favor to
your advantage, even while I suffered! You knew I was in pain and in
need of help. but still, gluttonously, you made yourself the
'greatest scientific genius in the universe' with their help. I
loathed you for that,"

"It wasn't like that!" Washu said. "Do you really think I needed
them? As soon as they started to try and take total creative control of
my projects, I backed out. I didn't want to waste my life making
merciless weapons of destruction for their people. I wanted to help
people, not hurt them! In the process, I lost a great deal of respect."

"So, you wasted the opportunity I never got!" Marihito snapped.
"Of all the arrogant, no good bitches."

For the third time, Marihito slapped Washu across the face. But instead
of falling to the ground with tears in her eyes, Washu stood her ground.
Grabbing his arm, she pulled him closer and stared deep into his brown
eyes and with every bit of strength left in her, she gave him those
words she never even knew she had inside of her heart until now.

"Every day of my life," she whispered. "I have felt regret for
making that choice. With all that lost respect, so went my firstborn
child. They took him from me. because in their eyes, I was not worthy
of keeping him,"

". Well, they were right!" Marihito said. And with all her
strength faded, Washu could not act upon the sheer, boiling hatred for
him that she felt as he spoke. "You fucked me up, you'd just fuck
your own child up even worse!"

"Marihito," Washu said, wearily falling to her knees before him.
"Please just end it now. I don't want to hear this. You're
obviously very bitter, but please. finish me off. You can get no
pleasure out of seeing this old girl cry her eyes out,"

"Oh, but I do!" Marihito hissed, bending down and pulling her up by
the roots of her hair. "I still haven't even told you how I managed
to trap your daughter. No evil mastermind can go by without letting the
heroine in on his plan,"

"At least you admit you're evil," Washu sighed.

"I sure am," Marihito grinned. "Because you made me that way,"

"Tell me your plan, then kill me," Washu said. "Just get it over
with, please,"

"Mwahaha," laughed Marihito, trying his best to sound evil but just
appearing silly. If Washu had felt like living, she might have laughed
at him. "Prepare to be amazed as my exquisite excellence becomes
apparent!"

Washu watched in feeble disdain as Marihito danced about describing all
his plans. She didn't listen to a single one of them, but instead
thought of her daughter and how much she had disappointed Ryoko as a
mother. Her inability to keep her own son mixed with the way she
hadn't been able to remain a good friend to Marihito, combined with
the fact that she hadn't even been able to build a solid relationship
with Ryoko after so long. None of the things Marihito was spouting
deliriously had any effect on her, but the knowledge that every person
she'd reached out to had ended up leaving her in some shape or form
was draining her powers. The way Marihito had treated her up until this
point was too good for her. It wasn't just his life she'd had an ill
effect on; Ryoko and her own baby boy had felt her poor attempts to
grasp humanity also. Hateful and defeated, she let Marihito's words
wash over her as she awaited the prolonged pains of death.

"I waited so long to see you face to face," Marihito babbled. "So
long. I couldn't find a way to reach you. They wouldn't let me
near you, Jurai thought you too precious a gem to be allowed near a
fungus such as myself. I wanted to just get close enough to you to show
you how much you'd hurt me, show you how much of a wreck I'd become.
I was the exact opposite to you by that point and I knew the revulsion
you'd feel would be more than enough to repay the sins you had
committed against me. But no, I couldn't. I couldn't reach you. No
matter how hard I tried, I couldn't reach you. Then, it came to me.
the perfect vengeance, the perfect way to get back at you for what you
did! It was so simple!"

"Ryoko." Washu whispered, holding an image of her daughter in her
head.

"I used my own intelligence," Marihito continued, ignoring Washu's
introspection. "Because that's something you could never take from
me, you know. You took everything else, but I still had my brainpower!
So, I stored my entire personality, my memories, my feelings. my
fucking betrayal! All of it. onto a little teeny tiny disc. because
that's how you saw me, as a teeny tiny little thing, wasn't it? I
was tiny, and you were a majestic tower of selfish bullshit! Rrrggh!"

"Jerry." Washu sighed.

"I took that disc," said Marihito. "Took it and never let go of it
until I could figure out a way to find you. Find where you'd set up
your new laboratory. When I heard through the grapevine that you'd
become a professor at the Science Academy, I paid some local space
pirates to smuggle the disc into your lab and install it into your
simulation chamber. Because I knew. I knew you'd have taken all my
designs, I knew you'd have stolen them to better yourself. I knew you
couldn't resist to hold my own design, MY design, that you'd ripped
off for a contest and destroyed my life. to hold it in your lab and
have it on display for all to see. That must have been such a big thrill
for you. I had them smuggle it inside, and install my own personality
into your simulation. and when they did. I lived anew inside your
simulation chamber, ready to take revenge! But, of course, when I awoke
there were far more prospects than I had at first imagined. You'd set
up a simulation network in the real world, which made it possible for me
to change people's perceptions of reality. and to capture your own
daughter,"

"Wait a second," Washu said, looking up before she got a chance to
hold the imaginary shape of Tenchi in her arms. "That's what you did?"

"Yes!" Marihito laughed. "It was so perfect! Kinda ironic, don't
you think? You're gonna die in an invention of your own design. oh,
but wait! You didn't design it! It was I who did! Haaahahaha!"

"You idiot!" Washu snarled, rising to her feet.

"Um. heh," Marihito said, his left eye twitching ever so slightly.
"What?"

"You think I kept a simulation chamber around because I was proud of
what I did to you?!" Washu asked.

"Of course!" replied Marihito. "How else do you explain the fact
that you still had it around after all this time?"

"Marihito." Washu sighed, placing a hand across her face. "I
kept the simulation chamber you designed because I felt bad about it!"

". What?" Marihito stammered.

"I wasn't proud of what happened to you," Washu went on. "I kept
the chamber because it reminded me of you. I wanted to remember you.
and the friendship we had,"

"A likely story," Marihito folded his arms. "You didn't even
remember me when I finally did show up!"

"That's because I'd had it around for twenty thousand years!"
Washu yelled, trying to get through to him. "Don't you see? This is
the same simulation chamber I had all those years ago. I kept it all
this time because of what it meant to me. because I felt bad about
what I did,"

"Then why did you never use it?" Marihito asked, still in disbelief
over her tale. "If it meant so much to you, how come it took you
twenty thousand years to activate it and release my personality?"

"You dimwit," said Washu. "That's exactly why I never used it. I
felt so bad about what had happened that I didn't even feel able to
turn the thing on! It was only until I started feeling so lonely that I
decided to try it out. now that I think about it, I must have tried it
out because it reminded me of you. I felt so alone that I felt compelled
to use it, to feel closer to an old friend I'd lost long ago."

"You're just trying to confuse me!" Marihito said.

"Heh, so you had your personality in my simulation chamber's
mainframe," Washu smiled to herself, wryly. "That explains so much.
No wonder all the simulant male characters were so horny, you'd been
alone for so long that your lust had become unbearable!"

"Shut up!" snapped Marihito, raising his hand as if he were going to
slap her again.

"Even those rabbits!" Washu giggled without flinching. "Ryoko was
right, they humped like Hell,"

"Shut up or I'll end your life right now!" Marihito threatened
her, his face literally inches from hers. "I mean it!"

"Go right ahead," said Washu, unfaltering. "If the only other
choice is to listen to your irresponsibility for the rest of my life,
then I'll gladly take death, you sick little man!"

"MY irresponsibility?" Marihito asked, genuinely shocked.
"That's it! I've had it with you! I'm going to give you your
punishment. the punishment I've had to suffer for the past twenty
thousand years, all on my own! The punishment you gave to me when I
needed a friend to cry to! I know your weakness, Washu. I know how much
you value your happiness. I know just how it would destroy your very
being if I took that all away. You were always such a cheerful soul,
Washu. Your heart was full of joy. but it was a sick joy. You found
happiness while I wallowed in sadness and pain! Well, now you can feel
just how I felt my whole life in mere seconds! And I know it will
destroy your will, just like it did mine. then my revenge will be
complete!"

Marihito reached out with spindly fingers and wrapped obscure shadows of
gloom and doom around her cranium. Washu winced as the feelings and
memories passed from his body unto hers, her brain imbibed the stinging
sensations of suppressed agony and invisible bullets burdened with
suffering shot through her skull. In an instant, she overflowed with the
pain and misery Marihito had felt over vast millenniums and for the
first time in her life she hated herself.

She saw herself through his hateful, overwhelming eyes. Her whole life,
she had been so proud of the body she had chosen for herself; she had
taken each step with pride and dignity. Now all she wanted to do was
tear herself to pieces for her absence in Marihito's life. His harsh
perspective engrossed her with its murky, morbid directive that centred
from a heart of darkness. She had never experienced such self-hatred; it
was too rich with pitiful retribution, and she had no choice but to
succumb to the will he had placed within her. The shadows began to
suffocate her like a quagmire, and the entire room seemed to grow larger
and larger around her. She knew all too well how Marihito felt, and in
that knowledge she drowned herself. Her breath escaped her, and she knew
that soon she would die from the lack of that vital spirit she'd once
had in abundance. There was no hope of survival.

"No hope," Washu said, feeling herself slip away.

"That's right, you have no hope!" Marihito laughed. "Just like I
never did! Oh, how beautiful you are in death. Soon, I will bury you
behind all those wretched, long ago nightmares. and I will finally be
at peace!"

Washu couldn't build up courage on the wavering, lonely platform of
her soul. She hated herself too much. All the pain she had caused in her
life was now returning to bite her in the ass, whether she could
remember it or not. That was yet another reason to hate herself; she
could not even recollect the wrongdoings she should have felt regret
for. The reasons to take her own life piled up on top of her head, and
she brought her fingers to her ugly, ugly face and started to claw away
her eyes so that she needn't look upon her own reflection anymore.
Then, she would go on to peel the skin off her body, and tear each
individual hair from her hideous head. All those little acts of torture
that Marihito wanted to commit, he was now getting the pleasure of
seeing her do them all to herself.

"Don't do this to yourself,"

At first she thought her ears had deceived her as much as her eyes were,
but she really could hear the voice of Jerry instructing her. She opened
her eyes and saw him above her. He'd place her in his lap and had
enshrined her with his wide, protective arms, and his eyes were bright
enough to keep the darkness from reaching right down into her throat and
pinching her innermost pride. The pride she had to be his friend, and
the love she had for him. It was that which stopped her from ending her
life, and there in his arms she became enlightened.

Jerry's life had been filled with far more misery than Marihito's
ever had. Marihito had been blessed with a capacity for knowledge like
no other; Marihito had been given the chance to have a great number of
friends and an education that millions would envy. He had been given all
those opportunities that Jerry had never seen a glimmer of. and still
he despised. Compared to Jerry, Marihito's life had been a glorious
ride through a wonderland of fortune. Jerry had lost so much before even
coming close to finding it. Their misery was similar, but their
characters were not. Marihito was a hateful, bitter, cowardly, evil
little man now. but Jerry had grown in sincerity, in nobility, and in
kindness with every wrong or misfortune committed against him by life.
He had grown to be the exact opposite to Marihito, and for that Washu
knew she could not blame herself for what had become of her long lost
friend. The hatred that Marihito had injected into her disappeared and
she rose to her feet from the shadows, shouldered by the love she felt
for Jerry and his strength through such painful times.

"Impossible!" Marihito frowned, watching her rise again. "You
should be begging me to kill you, to take away the pain I've bestowed
upon you."

"Eh," Washu snorted. "I just got a little migraine, is all. I'll
just take some asprin when I get outta here and I'll be just peachy,"

"Curse you!" said Marihito, shaking his head in disbelief. "You
know full well that it's your fault that I lost my chance at fame, at
a full life. I thought you would be kind enough to take your own life
to replace the one you took from me. I must have overestimated you,"

"Listen to yourself!" Washu said. "You're blaming me for all
your own faults. You say it's my fault you became so twisted and evil.
You say it's my fault that Jurai tried to use me. You say everything
is my fault! Did it ever occur to you that some of the stuff that
happened to you might have been due to some of the choices that you made
on your own?"

"None of it was my fault!" Marihito said. He was starting to cry
like a true baby, and the more Washu saw him for what he really was, the
less she regretted making that decision long ago. "It was all you!
Everything I ever did was for you. I worshipped you. you were. so
beautiful."

"You had a crush on me," Washu sighed, rolling her eyes. He didn't
deserve her sympathy for something as cheap as that. "And you took it
way too far,"

"It was more than that," Marihito mumbled under his breath. "I
loved you."

"Yeah, well, normally when you love someone, you let them know over a
candle-lit dinner or something," said Washu. "You don't spend your
life trying to kill them!"

"I loved you," Marihito kept at it. "I loved you, and I love you
even now. I can see you in ways that nobody else can. Everyone else saw
you as just a hot, seductive temptress that they wanted to violate with
their impure thoughts. but I knew you weren't like that. You were a
Goddess,"

"Oh man," Washu laughed, turning away from him. "Marihito. I was
never like that. I've never been the vision of purity you saw me as.
I'm not a Goddess,"

"You only say that because you're so wonderful!" Marihito lauded,
rushing forward and placing his hands on her shoulders. "You're so
amazingly pure and modest. you can't admit your faultlessness!
Amidst all those boys that lurked around you, you managed to retain your
virginity-."

"Marihito, I'd had sex before I even met you," Washu sighed.

". H. how. wh.the." Marihito gasped, his hands slowly
recoiling from her body as if he had dipped his hands into Pandora's
Box. "You. but."

"I lost my virginity over a year before we met," Washu told him,
refusing to make eye contact. Not because she felt bad, but because she
didn't feel like sharing with him the emotions that came with these
memories. All the tears, the happiness, the pleasure, and the pain; he
wasn't worthy of seeing any of it. "And I continued to have sex with
guys when we knew one another,"

"You. you're sick!" Marihito scowled, backing away from her.
"How could you lie to me like that?"

"I don't remember saying to you that I was a virgin at any time,"
Washu said, turning to look at him with her arms across her chest.
"Nor do I remember the details of our friendship involving having to
let one another know when we'd made love to certain parties of
friends. But trust me, honey, in twenty thousand years I've managed to
go through the Kamasutra many times over,"

"You. you're just a slut!" Marihito glared at her.

"You wouldn't be the first person to call me that," Washu shook
her head, sadly. "But I can say in all honesty that I loved every man
that I slept with. That's something few women can do. so I don't
feel bad for it, and I don't feel I deserve to be given the title of a
slut. Also, I can look into your eyes and know that the only reason you
said it is because you wish you were one of those men that I loved.
and made love to,"

"That's not true," said Marihito. "I valued your purity as much
as you should have,"

"You glorified me to a cruel extent, Marihito," Washu said.
"There's no way I could have lived up to your expectations, it made
your fall all the more devastating. Look what it did to you when I made
a mistake. If only you'd seen how imperfect I was, you'd probably
have been able to hang around with other students and I might not have
felt inclined to cheat to give you an advantage,"

"To give ME an advantage?" asked Marihito, a look of bewilderment
drawn crudely on his face. "What are you talking about? Your cheating
cost me my status as a respectable scientist, how is that to my
advantage in the slightest?"

"Huh?" Washu said. "Marihito, I copied your design to make it look
like I was the one who was the lousy scientist. My simulation chamber
was supposed to be greatly flawed in comparison to yours. but I guess
the council of judges didn't see that. Or maybe they just pretended
not to so they could keep pushing me as a public icon, or. I don't
know, the whole Academy was messed up back when Jurai owned it,"

"Oh my God," Marihito gasped, raising a hand to his open mouth.

"What's wrong?" asked Washu.

"That's why you cheated?" Marihito stuttered. He looked to be on
the verge of a breakdown, as if his entire punishment process had
instead affected him. It was strange to see him so powerless, while
Washu felt so in control of the situation, especially considering how
futile her attempting to struggle with him was. He had his mind made up,
and there was no changing it now. Then, in an all-important moment that
Washu had never before seen possible, he removed his hand and looked to
her with those eyes she had seen the first time they had met. "Then it
really is my fault,"

"What?" asked Washu, half-thinking this was just another ploy to toy
with her emotions and bring her down. "Marihito, cut it out. I made a
mistake. I've accepted that. I've probably made a lot of them. I
guess it's time to make up for them,"

"No." Marihito said, with a sharp intake of breath. "I'm the
one who made the mistake,"

"What do you mean?" Washu asked him.

"Washu," he said, backing away into the shadows. "Please forgive
me."

"Wait!" Washu said, reaching out with a hand to stop him from fading
into nothingness once again. "What are you talking about? What
happened? Don't leave me again!"

They were both surprised to hear those words. After all that Marihito
had put her through, after all he'd put Ryoko through, and even after
all he'd said about her friends. and Jerry. she didn't want him
to just disappear from her life again. His behavior and preceding
deception hadn't affected her view of him as a person, or as a friend.
He stopped, the upper half of his face cloaked in darkness, and
addressed her once more.

"You don't want me to go?" he asked.

"I just want to know why you're suddenly so down on yourself," she
raised her eyebrows in concern. He might have been about to release her,
or maybe he was just going to walk away and leave her standing there for
the rest of eternity. Either way, it didn't change how she felt; she
wanted to know why her friend had gotten so sad all of a sudden. "I
mean, you couldn't have just had a change of heart for no good reason.
could you?"

"C'mon, I may be insane, but I'm not crazy," Marihito said.
"But. you really want to know?"

"Of course," she said.

The shadows peeled away from his skin, and rather than the mimic she had
been seeing the whole time in this dark underworld, he now appeared to
her as his normal self. Everything about him was as she remembered back
when they were the best of friends, right down to the hunched shoulders
and scruffy hair. Washu couldn't help but smile upon recognition of
her old friend, even if he was a potential madman. She knew how bad
loneliness could get. she'd almost blown up at her own best friends
only a few days ago for something far more trivial. She wanted to
forgive Marihito. though she was more than willing to hear him out
before she gave him the forgiveness she had readied in her heart.

"Washu, promise you'll listen to what I have to say before you get
mad at me," he said.

"Get mad at you?" she frowned. "Why would I.?"

"Just promise," Marihito asked of her. "Please,"

"I promise," she said.

"Okay," he replied, taking a deep breath before he continued.
"Washu, when we were kids. I really worshipped you. I mean that in
the truest sense of the word, you were like. an angel to me. Every
project I worked on was intended as a testament to your transcendent
brilliance. I never actually tried to best you in those contests,"

"You didn't?" Washu asked. "Oh, Marihito, you should have. You
could've done great for yourself."

"I felt it was my place to keep everyone else from even coming close
to your state of perfection," Marihito ignored her. "As long as I
kept that second place. I was content that your position as overseer
of all things scientific would remain untarnished by all the others who
took part. I wanted other people to worship you. and as if it were all
according to my plans, they did. You were most the prized student of the
Academy,"

"Hmm," Washu said, blushing a little. She wondered just how sane
he'd been back then. Loneliness could do really terrible things to
people, it seemed.

"But then, I couldn't resist temptation any longer, and in my own
eyes I sinned." Marihito whimpered. "I sinned so deeply. and.
and then I sinned because I blamed you, my angel, for the sins I
committed against you,"

"I'm sure it can't have been that bad," Washu said, hoping she
was right.

"That day of the contest," he said, his hands hung loosely by his
sides as he spoke to the floor. "I wanted to win."

"Um, and.?" Washu said after there had been silence for a lengthy
amount of time.

"Don't you see? I wanted to beat you!" Marihito looked up at her
and flung tears this way and that as he spoke with unbridled passion.
"To try and be better than the very Goddess I worshipped! That's the
greatest sin I could have thought of putting into action. and I did
it, I tried to beat you,"

"Marihito. if that's all it was, there's nothing wrong with
that," Washu smiled.

"So when the time came to hand in our inventions," said Marihito.
"I'd paid off the stage hand that arranged them all according to
whose entry was which, and asked him to make sure our inventions were
swapped around. I wanted it to look like whatever you'd created. had
been my idea. You'd won each and every past contest, I thought it'd
be a sure-fire way of winning,"

"You didn't have to do that," said Washu, seeing the folly of his
endeavors. "Your idea was great! Even I felt envious that you'd
thought of it before anyone else. You had a real good chance of winning
even without having to cheat,"

"That was my way of trying to undo my sins," Marihito explained.
"I made my invention the best it could possibly be, otherwise people
wouldn't have been able to accept that you'd designed it. I'm such
an idiot,"

"Don't," Washu sighed. She'd heard this before, only from a much
sweeter human being. "You're no more of an idiot than I am. We just.
we all have a lot of regrets. But if we were to let regret take over our
lives, we'd have nothing. The reason you felt that you needed to take
out your hatred on me is because you couldn't move on; you let your
past define and control you. You thought if you destroyed me, it would
all go away and you could move on with some slight catharsis. It plagued
you even after your mortal body had wasted away, and you needed a
simulated personality to continue your quest out of fear that you'd be
so overcome by regret that you wouldn't be able to rest in peace,"

"My biggest regret," Marihito said. He was so out of breath from her
accurate description of his worthless existence that he had placed his
hands on his knees and was bending over as if to regurgitate that which
he had been chewing over in his mind for a near infinite amount of time.
"Was that you never gave me the love I tried so hard to give unto you,"

"But I did," she said.

"Huh?" he said, puzzled.

"I loved you as much as I did so many of those other men," Washu
explained. "I gave you my eternal friendship, I just didn't know
we'd be separated under such awful circumstances. You were as special
to me as all the others, Marihito. I just felt that if I let you know
how I felt, you would take it to heart. and never ever let me go. That
wasn't how I was back then, I was too much of a free spirit to let
myself get tied down to the ground by one man. I felt you'd be tied
down alongside me too, angst-ridden and unsociable,"

"I would have done anything you asked of me," Marihito told her.

"See, that's another reason I couldn't let you know," Washu
smiled, and for the first time in many a millennia, she touched him on
the face with as much warmth and compassion as she would have shown her
own child. "I wouldn't want you to be my slave,"

"I would have been if you wanted me to," Marihito whispered, the
warmth from her hand passing over into his face and coating him with a
soft glow that seemed to come from inside himself. "I would have been
anything,"

"I just wanted you to be yourself," Washu said.

And with the passage of time so full of languor, the room dissolved
around them and in its place stood something so familiar. something
from within both their hearts.

**

"You really should get this cut," Washu said, running a hand through
Marihito's long hair just to annoy him. "It's getting out of
control,"

"I like it that way," Marihito lied, flinching away from her as if
they hadn't known each other for.

"Huh?" Washu said, looking around. Her body had grown to near adult
proportions and she was dressed in an old Science Academy uniform that
she'd once had, over which was draped a casual, revealing lab coat.
She recognized her surroundings, too. They were in the old laboratory
she'd had when she was just a student at the Academy. The walls still
reeked of sulphur, and everything looked so untouched and ancient.
Nobody had used it for a long, long time. It was like an unopened memory
of times gone by, still wrapped and cherished in cobwebs of nostalgia.
"What's going on.?"

"I wouldn't know how to cut it," Marihito carried on, nodding to
the tray of bunsen burners she had been about to hand to him.

"Oh," Washu replied, giving it to him at last. He shuffled away with
the tray in his hands, the clanking of metal on metal covered his soft
footsteps as the tray twitched nervously. "Marihito, why have you
brought us back here?"

He turned to her, looking almost confused and hurt that she'd gone
against the script they'd set in stone so long ago. Then, he smiled
and shrugged.

"Why don't you cut my hair?" he insisted. "You'd probably do a
better job than I would,"

Suddenly, she felt a coldness in her right hand, and in it she found a
pair of scissors that had somehow gotten placed there without her
knowing. Marihito had now placed himself down on a lab stool, which was
a type that Washu noticed was very primitive and uncomfortable. She
tried to remember the design of the stools she'd replaced that
particular type with, but her memory was too cloudy. Instead, she walked
forward and placed a hand on Marihito's head.

"Marihito," she said. "I thought I told you, it's wrong to live
in the past,"

"I'm not," he replied. He didn't even have his eyes on her, she
noticed. He was studying one of the crumpled old periodic tables on the
wall. "Washu, please cut my hair,"

"Listen," she said, bending down and looking into his eyes. She
wondered why this memory meant so much to him that he'd bring it back
like this, forcing her to live it out once more. "If I do this,
you're going to just obsess over me again. I'm not going to allow
that,"

"You don't understand," he smiled, finally returning her gaze. His
face shone like she'd never seen it do so before. It had always been
so pale, as if the light refused to reach it for fear of losing all its
energy in his complexion, but now the light bounced right back off his
winsome features and sprang from his face with joy. "When you cut my
hair before, I regarded you as some kind of idol. You towered over me,
and I was beneath you. Now, we're both the same as one another. This
is the last memory I have of you before my mind becomes a sea of
confused praises for your angelic beauty. I want to try and see if I can
change the way I look. at you, at myself, at the world. at my life,"

"I understand," Washu said, raising the scissors in her hands and
lifting her chest into his face so she could properly cut his hair.
"So, what do you think of the lab so far? Looks good, doesn't it?"

Marihito felt as though he were being forced to stare into her chest
once again. Words filled his mouth, words he wanted to use to describe
her bosom as if it were the most beautiful sight he'd ever witnessed as
a young man. This, he now knew, was the closest he'd ever come to
being sexual with her. He felt so tempted to tell her she was an angel.
but he also felt the need to be brutally honest with her.

"I'm not sure how comfortable I feel here," he said.

"How do you mean?" Washu blinked, ceasing her idle snipping as she
listened.

"Being so close to you," he replied. "Sometimes I feel like I just
want to lean over and have you swallow me up,"

"Kinky," Washu giggled, and she started to cut once more. She found
herself unable to, though, as he'd grabbed her by the arm and had
stopped her forcefully.

"That's not what I meant!" he sighed. Washu trembled a little,
feeling his power even now in this field of memories. He still had the
power to destroy her if he felt like doing so, and she wondered why
she'd been so flirtatious with him. Then, she understood. He was
having her behave as she had done at this moment in time. She
remembered.

She remembered trying to flirt with him, to see what his reaction would
be. He'd been her little experiment in this laboratory, testing him
with ticklish compliments and innuendo. and he'd felt obliged to
take part in her experiment, because in his mind she was his mistress,
and he her slave. She sighed and looked down at him apologetically, only
to find he had stood up and taken the scissors in his own hands.

"Marihito." she whispered, backing away as he raised the scissors
to his own face. "I'm sorry,"

"Do you have any idea how hard it is to resist your beauty?!" he
frowned, his hand shaking so furiously that Washu felt he would cut
himself at any moment. or her.

"Marihito, don't!" she cried as he opened the scissors' blades
and proceeded to.

Cut his hair.

He cut into it with such delicate precision, and Washu felt enraptured
as she watched the locks of hair fall calmly like snowflakes. It fell in
such plenitude that soon the flooring was coated in a carpet of his
brown hair, refurbishing the lab with its sweetly simple d‚cor. It was
like watching him cast aside his regrets and seeing him anew, as they
stood together in that memory pocket as friends once more.

"Thank you," he said to her.

She saw it all so clearly now. He'd brought them back to this time and
reinstated her childish lust for him to see whether or not he could
prevent himself from permitting her license to flirt with him endlessly
to no real purpose. He had resisted the urge to let her mother and tease
him, because he had found the strength to start over and take control of
his past. and what was left of his future.

"Marihito," she said, slowly walking across the sleek matting of his
hair and standing before him. "Will you be okay?"

"I don't know," he said, leisurely. Something had changed inside
him; something so weird and bittersweet like a butterfly that had
emerged from its cocoon only to find it had lost its wings in the
process. "I must have died a long time ago. the real me, I mean,"

"Yes," Washu nodded, sadly. Deep down, she knew it to be true.

"Maybe this last act as a simulated person has redeemed my true self,"
he said to himself, looking up to the ceiling. "Or maybe there was no
point in any of it. Maybe nothing has changed,"

"You proved to yourself you could overcome a lifetime of suffering and
rise from the burning ashes a kind person, Marihito," Washu said,
noting how much he reminded her of Jerry. Then, she remembered
something. "Marihito. do you think you will release me?"

"Huh?" Marihito blinked. Then, he laughed a little. "Oh, of
course. I keep forgetting none of this is real. it's been my world
for so long. But yes. it's time to let go,"

"I'll try to remember you," said Washu, putting her arms around
him and squeezing him so tight that it felt like she'd squashed him
into a tiny ball. "This time, I'll try to remember,"

She felt the floor beneath her feet begin to dissolve, and to her
surprise Marihito had faded away long ago. Her tears hit the floor and
sent ripples through the dissipating strands of hair, and she watched
weakly as she left the room behind. Her body powered through the walls
of the simulation, and she nearly choked on the dusty matter that filled
her throat as she resurfaced into her lab, right into the awaiting arms
of her daughter.

**

End of Chapter Three...