Disclaimer
Tenchi Muyo! and its characters are the property of
Pioneer and AIC. This story and the character C32411 however, is mine.  
Please don't sue me, because I'm just writing this for fun. 

Special thanks go to my proofreader Literary Eagle, Many hug's to you ;)

And not to forget my Grammar corrector Kuuta Kutani thanks to you Again ;)

Well its story time
Will of things 
Chapter 2 Some Things Are Better Left Dead.
By Tom "TRON" Jensen (tron_dk@hotmail.com) And (tron.dk@get2net.dk)
************************************************************************

Chapter 2
Some Things Are Better Left Dead.


Blood.
The smell of blood.
C32411 smelled blood.

He looked around, but nothing was there.  Only darkness.
Then he noticed that he was standing in something.  Not water,
but something stiff.  He put his hand down in the substance
and took some of it up.

He smelled it.  It smelled like blood.  He tasted it.
It was blood.

Why was he standing here in a pool of blood?

Then the screams began.
Horrible screams, of many people and creatures.
Dead screams.

C32411 covered his ears, but it didn't help.
the screams just went on and on.

--

Washu was sitting and watching the assassin.  He was strapped
into a metal table, right beside Sasami, so that she could
keep an eye on both of them at the same time.
She had designed that table to hold Ryoko, so it should hold
him, too.  Once in while, the assassin shivered and moaned a
little, but otherwise he was still.

Washu called her holographic console up, and started to look
at the scans of her "guest".
He was a cybernetic organism, all right.  Every muscle
had been replaced with cybernetic muscles, and the bone was
replaced with a strong metal alloy.
Oh, he was a REAL piece of technology.

Beside the cyborg was a small table holding his equipment.
Plasma rifle, blaster, powersword, and five anti-matter
devices.  The cyborg had detonated one of those anti-matter
devices in downtown Tokyo.

Washu looked at the newspaper lying beside her.  Over 4,000
killed, and just as many wounded.  She looked over at the
assassin and forced away the urge to wipe him out.  If she
did, they would never find out who sent him.  Washu kicked her
scientific brain into gear, and continued her study of the
cyborg.

There was something that puzzled her; the cyborg had two
implants that troubled her scans.  A close scan indicated
that the implants were made of some kind of unknown metal.
The only thing that the scanners could detect was that the
implants were over forty-thousand years old, and it seemed
that all of the other cyborg implants were connected to those
two.

The rest of the cyborg body was top of the line, but there
were signs that he had been through a lot of repairing and
upgrades, not to mention all of the old scars covering his body.
Washu's data indicated that he must have been a cyborg for about
fifty years.  Aside from all of the special cybernetic organs
and special equipment that was installed in him, there was also
a powerful computer system integrated into him.

'Hmm...  Maybe there is a way to interface with that computer...'

"How long are you going to keep him alive?"

Washu almost had a heart attack.

"Haven't I told you not to sneak up on me that way!?" she shouted.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Washu.  I didn't mean to scare you," said Ayeka.

"That's okay," responded Washu while she made a mental note to
put her door crab up again.

"So, how long are you going to keep him alive?" Ayeka said while
she looked at the assassin's equipment.

"Who said that I was keeping him alive?" Washu said dryly.

"Aren't you keeping him alive?" Ayeka replied with a puzzled
look on her face.

"Nope, just stopped the bleeding. I can't fix more than that
before I've studied him more."

"When you have the data from him, I want you to kill him..."

Washu stared at Ayeka.  She looked like herself, but Washu
could see that she had been crying.
"Well, isn't that kind of up to the GP?  You know they have..."

Washu was cut short by a ice cold stare from Ayeka, one of
those kind that sends shivers down one's neck.

"As you wish, Ayeka," said Washu.


After Ayeka left Washu's lab, she went to her room and turned
on the intergalactic com-link.  She knew that her dad would
be angry, and come right away.  He would probably take her
and Sasami away from this place to a more secure location.
But, he had to be told.

She turned the device on.


--


That night at the dinner table looked like the emergency room
at a hospital; nobody said a word.  The dinner, which was made
up of junk food, only added to gloomy mood.  Everybody grieved
and looked at the empty chair.

Afterwords everybody went down to Washu's lab to see to Sasami.

They stood and watched her, except Washu, who was typing on her
console.

"I have a good news, and bad news," she said after a while.
Everybody turned and watched her intensely.

"The good news is that I have repaired the damage that was
inflicted on her."

"What is the bad news?" Ayeka asked after a pause.

"She is in a coma, and there is no telling when she will come
out of it."

Tears began to rain down Ayeka's face.

"I'm sorry." said Washu quietly.

Ayeka stormed over to the assassin, and hit him repeatedly
with her fist, shouting "Why? Why? Why..."

Tenchi walked over and hugged her.
"Stop it, Ayeka.  If you kill him, there will be nobody who
can tell us who hired him."

Ayeka stood and cried at Tenchi's shoulder for a while.

"Come on, Ayeka.  Let's go up and have a cup of tea," Tenchi
said as he started to lead Ayeka away.


After the two of them were gone, Ryoko walked over to the
assassin.  Washu joined her, and they just stood and look at
him for a while.

"What is he? Ryoko asked.

"I don't know," Washu replied.  "There is not much of his
original body left, it has mostly all been replaced. I'm
running a scan of his blood, but even that has been changed
to better fit the cybernetics."

"I have never seen a cyborg like him before," said Ryoko,
"I have seen people with an artificial eye, or limb, but
never like this."

"Me, neither," admitted Washu, "And I have seen a lot."

"Can you get the data out of him?"

"I don't know.  There are a lot of traps on him to prevent
that kind of access."

"So you cant get the data, then?"

"Of course I can get the data! I AM the number one
genius scientist in the universe for a reason.  It just
takes some time that, is all."

"When you are done with him, I'll use him for target
practice," said Ryoko.

"You can have what Ayeka leaves behind when she is done
with him."

Ryoko turned and left, leaving Washu alone with her guest.
She stared at him for a long time.

'Who are you?' Washu silently said to herself.
'Who are you?'

'Well, back to work.'  She began to look for a a way to
scan her guest for some more information.

--

After two days of work there was no change in Sasami's
condition, and the whole house was dead still.
Nobody did anything, and everybody just sat around.

The only one who was doing something was Washu.

Number thirty-four gone.
Number thirty-five gone.
There was somebody who really wanted the secret to die
with this cyborg.  So far Washu had removed thirty-five
small devices that would destroy the cyborg if he was
tampered with.  Some were types of poison, and others
were a kind of gate device that would send the cyborg
out into subspace.  And then there were the good old
fashion  anti-matter bombs.
If one of those went off, the explosion would match a
one-hundred forty megaton atomic bomb.

And the last one, Number thirty-six....  gone.

Yes, somebody really wanted to not have their secret out.

When Washu turned his face to look for more things that
go boom, she noticed something in the deep hole on the
right side of his face, where Ryoko's sword had gone in.
It was a small piece of cybernetics that had been loosened
by the impact.

She looked carefully to see if it was wired to anything else.
It wasn't, but there were a lot of tiny, silver strings
going into the brain.

'Hmm... What is this, then?' Washu thought.

--

The next day at the dinner table, Washu let the bomb drop.

"I don't think that he knew what he was doing."

The silence that followed was only broken by the sound of
Washu eating.

"What do you mean with this 'not knowing?' Last time I
checked he was the one who pulled the trigger," Ryoko
snared.

Washu ignored her

"How do you know that?" asked Tenchi after a while.

"I've found that he has something called a memory block
installed into him.  Well, actually, he had three
implanted.  The other two are backup.

Silence.

"Isn't anybody going to ask me what a memory block is?"

Silence.

"Hmm. well I'm done anyway. See you later."

Washu left the table to go back to the lab.



After two hours of concentrated work she was ready to cut
the power to the last memory block.  She had fixed the
damage on the assassin's head, and restored his face to
normal.

"Here goes nothing," she said and cut the micro wire.

C32411 noticed that the screaming stopped and everything
was quiet.  After a while, the darkness faded away,
and then the memories came back to him.

He remembered everything.

Now, it was C32411 who was screaming.



Washu could see that something was obviously happening
to the assassin.  He was twisting and turning on the
table.  She had found the interface, but she could only
get access to visual and sound circuits.  That meant she would
only visual and sound output.  She put the data up on the
console.

The sound of screaming people filled Washu's laboratory.



A half hour later Washu came out of her lab.
She didn't talk to anybody, but just left the house and
walked out to the lake.

After sitting by the lake for a while Tenchi came out to
her and sat by her side.

"What's wrong, Little Washu?" he asked after a while.

"Maybe we should have left him to die on that street..."
Washu responded after a time.

"What do you mean?"

"What I just did to him is much worse."

"What did you do to him?"

"I made him remember everything..."

"I can't see what the problem is, then."

"Well, try to understand.  He had no memory of who he
is and what he had done over the years.  Now I have
restored his memory, and he has to see every evil deed
he ever did."

"I still don't see the problem."

"Imagine that one day you find out that you have been a
slave of someone, and have been used to do the most horrible
things to people, and THEN see, feel, and smell every kill
you had done over the years.

If he's lucky, this will fry his brain, and he will never
know what he has done."

Tenchi and Washu sat by the lake until the stars came.


--


Suddenly, C32411 was lying in a grass field.
He stood up and looked around.  He was alone.

"Don't you like me anymore?" a voice said behind him.
He turned around and looked at the little girl.

She looked a lot like the subject that he had been
sent out to process.

But that wasn't the subject.

The little girl looked at him, and he looked at her.

"Are you going to leave me again?" the little girl asked.

Then the darkness returned.



C32411 opened his eyes.
He was in a great hall, or something.

CCI status.

CCI status.

Nothing.

They must have done something to him.

"SD 32 45 67." he said out loud.

A small beep told him that the self-destruct was still
working.

"Things in the night," he finished.

The beeping came again, faster and faster.
'Good bye, world,' C32411 thought. He closed his eyes.

The beeping became a single tone, and then nothing.

"Are you looking for this?" a female voice said.

C32411 opened his eyes and looked up at a green eyed
female with red hair.  Even without the CCI he
remembered who this was.  It was the scientist Washu
who lived with the subject.

She was holding a small device and waving it back and
forth.

"It's rude to leave without saying goodbye," Washu
said with an evil grin on her face.



Ten minutes later the whole house was back in Washu's lab.
"Now, tell us who sent you," Ayeka demanded

Gruber didn't answer, but instead he was trying to get
free of the restraints holding him.

"This is getting us no where," Ayeka said.

"Let me try," said Ryoko, "I'm good at getting
information out of people."

"He can't feel pain, Ryoko," Washu said while she was
typing at her console, "His nerve system was more or less
fried.  It will take some time before he can feel anything
again."
"I need some time to hack into his memory," she said while
she was typing wildly on her console.  "He's fighting me
all the way."



C32411 didn't hear what Washu was saying.  He was using
all of his energy stopping her from getting into his mind.

It was like a game of chess.  Every move that Washu made,
he had to destroy or block.  But, Washu had an unlimited
number of pieces; Gruber was loosing his.

Suddenly the attack stopped.  C32411 open his eyes and
looked up at Washu.

"Don't you understand that they have been using you, you
little fool?" Washu asked, staring straight into Gruber's
eyes.

C32411 didn't answer.  He just gave Washu an evil stare.

"There is no need to do their bidding anymore!"
Washu could see that it wasn't getting in.

"Well, have it your way." Washu started to type on the
console again.

--

Two days later Washu came up from her lab looking very tired.

"Did you get through?" asked Ayeka.

"No.  He is as stubborn as Ryoko.  I just came here to get
something to eat," Washu replied.

Ayeka looked at Washu.  She had big bags under her eyes
and walked like a 'zombie', or whatever they called it on
television.



Down in the lab C32411 felt like somebody had poured a
gallon of rocket fuel down his brain and lit it with a match.
He was very, very tired.  It was a matter of hours, and then
she would win.

Trying to clear his mind, he started to look around the lab.
A big chamber was right beside him.  There was something in it.

Suddenly, he could see what it was.

The subject.

He stared at her for a long time.  There was something
covering her.  She looked like the little girl in his dreams.

"Proud of your handiwork?" a female voice said.

He looked at Ayeka.
C32411 smiled.
He was going to loose, so why not get the last word?

"No, I'm not proud of my 'handiwork,' if you must know."

"Oh, he talks," ayeka said dryly

"Yes, I am known to do that on occasion."

"What do you mean you're not proud of it?" ayeka asked

"I was sloppy.  She is not dead.  If I had done my job right
she would be six feet under, and I would be sitting in a bar
at the far end of the galaxy watching you cry on the holo."

Ayeka slapped him very hard.

C32411 smiled.

"Well, it doesn't matter anyway.  She doesn't seem to wake up
anymore.  Dead or coma, it's the same thing.  I did process
the subject.  I won and you lost," C32411 said with a big smile
on his face.

Near Ayeka there was a small table containing the assassin's
equipment.
Ayeka took one of the plasma swords, turned it on, and raised
it over her head.

"Time to pay for your crimes, criminal."

C32411 smiled at her.

The sword came racing down at him.

He closed his eyes. 'Good bye world. See you sometime.'

...
Nothing happend.
C32411 opened his eyes.  He wasn't dead.

Ayeka stood and stared at him.

"You know, a thought just crossed my mind.  I don't think that
I will kill you just yet.  No, on the other hand I think that I
will keep you alive for all eternity.  That's how long you have
to suffer for hurting my sister."

Ayeka turned around, and walked out.

C32411 watched her go, smiled, and continued to look at the
subject.



Half an hour later Washu walked in into the lab.

'Here we go again.' C32411 said to himself.

"Why won't you just give up?" Washu said to her self out loud.
She was beginning to run out of ideas.  She had tried everything,
and he had blocked it all.

"The only thing I have left, is my will," C32411 replied.

Washu jumped.

"Ohh, we're speaking now, are we?"

"Kind of, I guess."

"Why won't you just tell us who sent you?"

"Why should I?  Afterwords you will surely kill me."

"Are you sure about that?"

"Come on, Washu.  I'm not stupid, you know."

"You know my name?" washu asked

"Sure. I studied you for a long time, and planed the attack.
We know who you are, Washu," C32411 said with an evil grin
that sent a shiver down Washu back.

They stared at each other for a long time.

"Can you tell me something?" C32411 finaly asked.

"Yes."

"How did you do it?"

"Do what?"

"Made that little girl appear in my mind."

"You must have a new virus of some kind."

"What are you talking about?"

C32411 looked at Washu and tried to determine if she was
lying.

"I didn't make anything appear.  It was yourself."

"I don't believe you.  This is a trick to get me to
cooperate."

Washu looked at the assassin, turned around and picked
something up from a tray nearby.
"Do you know what this is?" she asked and held three small
pieces of metal in front of C32411.

C32411 stared at the 3 small pieces of metal.
He remembered this kind of cybernetics.  He had used it
on many subjects, to make them forget something.

"Yes.  It's a memory block.  Why?" he finally answered.

Washu smiled and tapped something on her console.

A screen flickered to life in front of the assassin,
showing Washu removing the same three devices from his
cranium.

C32411 didn't know what to say.  This can't be true,
mustn't be true.  He had always been a loyal subject
of the link.  Why would the link use this on him?
Why?

No answer came.

Seeing that the assassin didn't want to talk anymore,
Washu called her console up to try again.

"What happens if I cooperate?" the assassin asked.

Washu smiled.

--

"No, no, and no.  There can be no deal with that
thing!" Ayeka shouted.  "I won't have it!"

"But Ayeka, if he doesn't cooperate, we will get nothing
out of him.  I can get into his mind, but with the mess
it's in, we can't be sure that we get the right data.
And it's who send him that you want, isn't it?"

"He SHOT my little sister, there is no way to redeem that!"

"I know, but is it the gun you want to punish, or the
person that fired that gun?  He is no more than a weapon,
used by some other person."

"Do you mean that he is not going go pay for what he has
done?"

"I didn't say that, but I think that restoring the real
person, in that thing lying down there in my lab, will be
a much worse punishment than anything the legal court system
can do to him.  So what do we decide to do?" Washu said
and looked at the others around the table.


--

C32411 was standing in the blood again.
The sound of the suffering and dying was all around him.

"Stop it!" he shouted. "Leave me alone!!"

C32411 opened his eyes and looked up at Washu, who was
shaking him.

"Well we talked about it, and 'no deal.'"

"Hmm, I figured that much," said C32411.  "Well, back to the
frying pan."

Washu looked at the assassin, and then decided to do
something else, knowing that Ayeka was going to be pissed.

"But there is something we can offer..."

"Oh, what is that? A quick execution?"

"No, we will not kill you, but instead turn you over to
the Galaxy Police when we have the information."

"How can I be sure that you'll keep your end of the bargain?"
C32411 asked.

"You can't," Washu answered.

"I don't have much of a choice, do I?"

"Not really."

There was a long silence.

"Okay, do it.  I won't resist."

"Okay," said Washu.  "Here we go."

--

When Ayeka, Tenchi, and Ryoko three hours later came down
to check on Sasami, Washu was typing like the World
depended on it.

"Hi, Washu.  What's up?" Tenchi asked.

"I'm looking for some hint on who ordered the hit on Sasami."

"Oh, did you break him?" Ryoko asked.  "It's about time
he gave up."

"Not really.  He allowed me to get in."

"He did?  Oh Washu, you little sneak.  How did you manage
that?" Ryoko asked.

"Well, nothing really.  I just promised him that we would
turn him over to the Galaxy Police when we were done."

"What!?" Ayeka, Tenchi and Ryoko shouted.

"How could you make that promise to THAT thing!?" Ayeka
shouted.

"Because we are NOT the judge, jury, and executioner,"
Washu replied calmly.

"But he SHOT Sasami."

"I know he shot Sasami, but that doesn't change the fact
that he isn't the one to blame."

The argument stopped with the sound of the moaning assassin.
He twisted and turned such that the table he was strapped
to jumped and danced.

Washu continued to type on her console, ignoring Ayeka.

"What's with him?" Tenchi asked after a while.

"He is getting his memory back," answered Washu.
"Want to see?"

"Sure," Tenchi answered.

A big screen appeared in front of Tenchi.
After a couple of seconds Tenchi's face turned white.

"What is it, Tenchi?" Ryoko asked.
When no answer came, she moved in to see.
Ayeka joined Ryoko.


Washu looked at the data.  There was a strong encryption
on his memory, and there was a lot of damage caused by
the head wound Ryoko had given him.  She wouldn't be able to
get into the encrypted memory before his memory was repaired.
Washu had a program to repair that kind of damage, but
the program was made for the biological memory of her
computers, not a living person.  Washu loaded the memory
reconstruction program.
'Here goes nothing,' she thought.
She pressed the execute key.



C32411 was sure that that Washu had cheated him; this was
worse than the screaming.

He felt every kill that he had ever made, saw the look on
the face of his victim, felt their warm blood running down
his hands.  Heard the sound of the victims begging for mercy,
and the sound of a blade entering a body.

"No! No! No! Stop it!" he shouted and tried to block it out,
but it just kept coming.

C32411 screamed, and everything became dark.



Washu looked at her console.  He had passed out, but the
program seemed to have worked.  Unfortunately, she wasn't
able get into his mind while he was unconscious.  The interface
didn't allow that.  There was no way she could change that
without damaging the neural interface, so she decided against
it.

The holo screen came back to life, and Washu started to type at
her console.



"Come on, Brother!  We're going to be late!" a voice said.

C32411 open his eyes, and there was the little girl.

He got up, and looked at her.
Then it hit him.  It was his little sister.  The memory of her
started to come back to him.
It was his sister.  C32411 didn't know how to feel about
this...
He had a sister?

Several different feelings ran through C32411, and the warm
feeling of his sister collided against the cold and
calculating mind of the assassin.

Finally, the assassin gave in, and C32411 felt something he
never thought possible...   Love?

"Where have you been?" she asked.  "I've have missed you."

"Don't worry.  I'm back now," C32411 said with a smile on
his face as he picked her up.

"Sure?" the little girl asked, sending him a big smile.

"Sure," he said, smiling back at her.  Then he suddenly saw
a small metal object hanging in the air beside him.
"What is tha-"

The small thing shot him, and everything turned black again.



Pain, and a funny smell, caused the assassin to awaken.
He was in a room of some sort, lying strapped to a table.

Then, he heard the sound of a saw or something, and a scream
right next to him.  He turned his head, and saw a big
insect-like creature standing next to his sister, holding what
seemed to be some sort of saw.

The creature lowered his instrument and began to saw into his
sister.  His sister screamed, then passed out from the pain.

"Leave my sister alone!" the assassin screamed.

Everything became black.



Tenchi, Ayeka, and Ryoko just stood there and looked at the
black screen.

Washu stared at the screen.
This reminded her of something deep inside of her, but she
promptly dispelled it as biological occurance.
Still, the scream of the little girl sounded in her mind.

Ayeka was having the same problem.  She actually felt sorry
for the young boy on the field.
'But, he isn't the one lying here on the table,' she reminded
herself.  He was still guilty.  It sounded very good, but
Ayeka wasn't totally sure anymore.

Tenchi stared at the Screen and tried to get a grip on what he
just had witnessed.  They had cut his sister up right in front
of him.  Tenchi could hear the scream and the sound of the saw
cutting into her flesh.

Now he understood what Washu ment by 'something worse than dying.'
Tenchi closed his eyes and tried to get the scream to get out
of his mind.

Ryoko felt something deep inside of her.  This reminded her of
the time when Katago was using her to kill people.

She remembered the sound of the dying people.

This brought a lot of memories back to her.

The memory of how it feels to have warm blood sprayed on you.
The look on a child's face when her sword sank deep into it.

Ryoko shivered as old buried memories began to surface.


The silence was almost terrifying.  Nobody said anything.

Ryoko was the first to break the silence.
"Some things are better left dead."