Tenchi Muyo (All Good Things)
Copyright© 2009 by Dreaming Bear
Chapter 108: 'Schism'
"I don't remember much of what happened after bursting out of that tube." Ryoko's voice continued.
"Most of what followed seems hazy even now.
The next, even semi-solid recollection I have is of flying through the corridors of the Soja, laughing uncontrollably! Destroying everything in my path! All without a clue to even who the hell I was!
Yet somewhere somehow knowing that something was terribly wrong!
I remember landing in the main hall trying to get a hold of my self!
Almost managing to calm down when I caught sight of my reflection in a panel.
Something about the image drove me absolutely berserk! I started unleashing on anything and everything, which cast a reflection!
Finally managing some where along the way to burn a hole in the main dome.
Explosive decompression did the rest, hurling me and everything not nailed down into the void!
Not that it mattered more than anything else did at that moment.
Washu and Arin ... damn them, had engineered me too tough!
Though I believe death might have been somehow preferable to the chaos rattling around in my skull!
I could hear voices screaming!
Arin thundering that I had killed him! Another more like my own raging of his betrayal!
I found myself firing plasma bolts again and again! Insanely trying to hit something to silence them both! Blasting huge section from the Soja's hull.
Through the dim and din both mental and the physical pain at last came another voice, In its own sweet way no less powerful."
"MEYOW!" Ryo-oki sang as the starship sored into view. Still dragging debris and trailing rapidly freezing oxygen from where she had forced her own exit from the Soja. From there began a dance as Ryo-oki followed a Ryoko gone mad! Dodging and in some cases enduring the direct impact of plasma unleashed from Ryoko's hands.
"'Oki' must have trailed me for hours." Ryoko's voice continued with a note of sadness.
"Singing to me, soothing her concern. Finally attempting a rendezvous, daring bringing her hull gently against me where I at last drifted uncaring having spent my initial fury!
Instinctively knowing ... or perhaps simply gambling that I wouldn't attack!
I remember her cooing motheringly telepathic while exercising the patience of a stone.
Oki must have waited hours until I regained enough of my sense of self to finally translocate myself aboard.
Fear, self-hatred, revulsion, rage!
Even then the voices would not quiet, though a sort of cease-fire was eventually reached.
Every other emotion named or nameless mixed merged ebbed and swelled within me!
I remember now thinking, if indeed the term 'I' even applied, that the backlash of energy must have transferred some portion of Arin to me!
It was in that state of being that a kind of calm 'settled' if only temporarily.
With his body gone, the equipment smashed and the Soja wrecked...
He? I? We? Reasoned, again if you could even laughingly call it that!
That the only recourse left was to visit vengeance upon those who'd ultimately brought this fate upon us!
In an act of barbaric self-hatred and denial we overrode Ryo-oki's controls and set a course towards planet Jurai!
Attacking anyone or thing we encountered along the way.
Our first such victim being a luxury deep cruiser, unfortunate enough to pass within scanning range of the wounded Soja!
Their act of kindness ... and mercy repaid in blood a thousand fold!
Poor Ryo-oki! Having no control of herself, she was force to watch as we used her ram knives' to rip open the hull of the unarmed cruiser!
My sweet partner still carries the face of a young silver-blue haired girl, gazing terrified out through a portal as we powered away! Leaving the cruiser burning and venting. Drifting in the void!
From there we made our way inwards. Cutting a swath of destruction through the core systems!
Baital! Serene! Paradisea! Ecstasa! Hurune! And Ryuten!
Finally descending upon Jurai itself!
With all the second generation trees gone and Tsunami herself still mending, resistance to our onslaught was token at best!
We visited only random destruction upon the most of the world, saving our ultimate wrath for Juraihelm!"
"I remember." Ena's voice interrupted, firm yet gently as she 'faded in' yet again directly below where Ryoko was currently 'perched' in the current scene.
Gazing down upon her guide, seated atop an out-jutting knob on one of the many giant trees comprising the immediate background. It was a place only too familiar to Ryoko. Having seen it countless times in dreams and nightmare, over and over across the span of her years. Recalling back to the day she had lived it. Having ultimately being the cause of it all.
The boughs tree above her like most of the arboreal canopy around them, totally ablaze!
Walking slowly towards her, gazing up Ena's Boralin skin was tinged green by the hellish lights cast by the inferno raging all around.
"I was there, if you recall?" Ena paused clearly amid an enforced calm. Disdainfully surveying their surroundings.
"And this place?" She queried rhetorically while gesturing about.
"This is where you met my dear Yosho."
"I killed, so many." Ryoko replied thickly. "Most of them without a struggle!"
"You descended like a force of nature!" Ena told her passionately.
"One dose not argue with the storm Ryoko! One merely avoids, weathers or is destroyed."
"I wanted Azusa!" Ryoko looked at Ena grimacing oddly.
"Why didn't he come?"
"Off planet, in space." Ena replied simply.
"Overseeing the refit of the imperial dreadnought, Brutal." She paused displaying a wry humorless smile.
"The irony is, if you had destroyed the cruisers in orbit rather than merely crippling them, you would have succeeded in destroying the thrown!"
"Had I know then that it was Azusa son facing me." Ryoko swore slowly. "I would have slain him where he stood!"
Ena merely nodded, choosing to neither condemn or condone.
"I believe Yosho was hard at his training when the first explosions were heard..." she mused and gestured, as the world about them again shifted.
The smoke filled sky above promptly lightened as the burning desiccated trees seemed to re-foliate almost exploding back to life!
Ryoko continued to observe as all about transfigured, finding herself now seated on a wall over looking what was clearly a training ground to her eyes. There were several clues which spoke of this loudly.
Similar contrivances were visible which Yosho must have fatefully reconstructed for use with both his and later Tenchi's training on Earth.
She watched with mild interest where several retainers were gathered about both to spar and supervise the young crown prince.
Ryoko had to admit seeing Yosho so young again, his handsome face determinability set as he pursued his 'katta', brought home again how Ayeka could have been so hopelessly smitten.
"What are you doing here?" A girl's voice, an all to familiar one! Suddenly snapped.
Directing Ryoko's gaze downward to a thick clump of brushes dividing the training area from the rest of a huge garden maze. Finding she was both startled and pleased to see the familiar face of Ayeka!
Looking much as she had the first time Ryoko had seen her. Crossly addressing and equally familiar second presence concealed within the shrubbery.
"Not so loud my princess!" Yet another but only slightly younger appearing version of Ena replied after only mildly starting from the intrusion.
"We would not want to disturb our young prince at his lessons!"
"You are the imperial concubine!" Ayeka growled uncharitably.
"It's not proper! You're spying on him like this! Your old enough to be his grandmother!"
"But still young enough to lean you over this knee if you don't still that shrill tongue!" Ena warned sternly. Smiling instantly at how scandalized Ayeka appeared even considering the notion!
"Yes I, delivered him with these two hands, rocked him in his cradle." Ena took the moment to glance appreciatively again the direction of the young men.
"And watched him grow in to a fine example of a man!" She added pleasantly, before fixing Ayeka with a glare.
"I more than any are aware of the differences in our respective ages! You needn't be so cruel!"
"I still say you ought to be ashamed!" Ayeka challenged hotly. Refusing to be 'backed down'.
"Your also conveniently forgetting the mater of who will be his wife!" She added with no discernible increase in ambient temperature.
Ena had started to turn. Preparing no doubt a suitably catty rebuttal. To the point of raising an actual finger while drawing a breath.
When whatever refute, which might have been forth coming, died unspoken as a dull distant rumbling sounded ominously from on high. Instantly commanding attention from all with in the open training area as well as those hidden within its shrubs.
"Is that thunder?" Yosho muttered aloud, giving voice to the general notion shared by all.
"No storm was foretold for today my lord." One of the sparing partners remarked, as the rumble was repeated and protracted, steadily getting louder.
"What the devil?" Yosho remarked, almost prophetically just as something shot by over head too fast for most eyes to follow. An instant before the roar of a sonic boom heralded entire scene erupted in fire descending from above.
Almost an eternity it seemed had come and gone, before the hellish light from the blaze dimmed enough to finally find Both Ena and Ayeka miraculously unscathed from the conflagration. Mercifully shielded somehow by the very bushes they had been hiding behind.
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