Chapter 58: 'Sugar Booger'

"Nobuyuki?" He seemed to hear distantly. "Honey?"

He tried to focus, everything felt just like it looked, Fuzzy! It reminded him of a water color landscape after someone had dumped an additional bucket of h2o on it. Muted shapes were all around! It seemed at first like he were drifting impossibly up a long ladder. Till something argued to him somehow that he was in fact on his back looking up at a series of ceilings lights as they surged past his view.

He'd just begun to make some cognitive headway when noting he was entering a large gray/white room. There was something vaguely familiar about it. Then there was that curious floating sensation! What was going on? Where was he?

"Sweetie, this is Washu's lab." A voice answered, at once familiar and alien. Mainly because he'd not heard this version of it since high school.

"Achika?" He asked.

"Over here!" She replied, with that ubiquitous giggle she'd had back then. He turned, now that he was suddenly aware that he could, towards the source. There she was! More beautiful than he remembered. Now facing her, Nobuyuki was struck speechless. For so terribly long he'd wanted to gaze into those eyes again, hear that voice! Say all the things he wished to tell her. Yet looking upon her now, he couldn't find one word to bridge the void.

"For crying out loud boy!" Achika huffed, hands on hips. "Don't you have anything to say to your dead wife?"

"I love you!" He stammered. It was the only thing that he could think to say. Possible because he felt he'd never said it enough when he could've.

"Don't be silly Nobuyuki!" Achika told him reproachfully. "I know you love me, always did!" She then softened as was always her way. "I love you too!" She smiled, which always caused his world to melt. That is if it weren't already liquid.

He suddenly became aware, of a wave for lack of a better word washing over around and through him. Blurred shapes were moving through the ether. Seeming to disrupt his world because of their solidity. Strange muted shapes. Vague outlines.

One, looking like a purple post with two black ropes hanging from it, the other resembling a red porcupine.

"Ayeka you've got to calm down!" The red shape was saying.

"But this is Tenchi's father!" The purple post replied. "We can't just let him die!"

"He won't if I can help it!"

"Tenchi's? fath..." Nobuyuki began.

"You honeybear." Achika told him.

"I'm gonna die?"

"Well," She cleared her throat. "Now that's what I."

"THAT'S WONDERFULL!" He exclaimed suddenly, looking to her like he'd just won one hundred million yen. Throwing his arms open Nobuyuki started towards her.

"COME HERE! SUGER BOOGER!" Achika's eye's widened then contracted in the space of an instant.

"DON"T CALL ME SUGAR BOOGER!" She suddenly steamed. "YOU KNOW I HATE THAT!"

Ever since that one time they'd rode a fairish wheel and she'd got sick! It seemed he took extreme pleasure from reminding her! Oh, everyone else thought, it was such a cute little pet name! When in fact he'd hung it on her because she spewed cola through her nose!

"Oh! I ought to just!" She threatened, shaking her head muttering Achika doubled up her fist. Or at least, tried to, because as always his response was to just stand there, smiling.

"You are just so cute when you're pissed!" He smiled.

"WHY AREN'T YOU DOING SOMETHING?" Nobuyuki heard Ayeka shrill. Causing him to turn, looking at a scene which was rapidly gaining focus. Of him, still dressed in his night cloths, laying atop a slab in presumable one of Washu's many laboratories.

With a calmness that amazed him he counted five bloody holes! It struck him then how strangely detached he felt about the mater. Aside from wondering if Sasami would ever get those stains to come out!

"I have to get him on to life support before I do anything!" Washu snapped her green eyes blazing. "Ayeka, please try to calm down!"

Nobuyuki watched in utter shock as Ayeka mastered her emotions.

"It's just that he's done so much for everyone and we usually treat him like he isn't there!"

"Nobuyuki doesn't exactly make 'liking him' the easiest thing!" Washu told her, placing an odd sort of mask over his face. "He's got a rather creepy routine!"