PRINCESS, PIRATE, POLICEWOMAN, WIFE...

Author: Daferge

Disclaimer: Tenchi Muyo! is copyright AIC/Pioneer Ltd.

All respective characters are property of their original owners. All original characters and ideas are property of the author.

Chapter 44.... And now for something different...

( Masaki Shrine... )

It was a bright, quiet day was Detective Kiyone Makibi sat on the bench, under a tree...

The bench was on the edge of an open area where two males were swinging wooden sticks at each other...

Each was trying to hit the other, all the while trying to keep from being hit...

The young boy was moving around quite quickly and had managed to keep from being hit, however he hadn't managed to hit his opponent ether...

Not having to be out on patrol and having been scooted out the house by Sasami, who wanted to fix dinner, without a bored Kiyone looking over her shoulder, Kiyone brought Mayuki up to the shrine to watch Tenchi's grandfather, Katsuhito teaching his new young student...

Young Rogon was managing to avoid his Sensei's bamboo Bokken, for quite some time, before giggling distracted him...

The next thing he knew, he was on the ground looking up at his Sensei shaking his head...

He also had a throbbing headache and a bump where the Bokken had made contact with the back of his head...

" Over confidence will cause you to let down your guard... Once a fight begins, you must continue to concentrate, until it's conclusion... "

As Katsuhito helped his young student up, Kiyone smile and looked down at little Mayuki sitting in her lap...

Mayuki had been quiet, until some thing caused her to giggle...

Kiyone wasn't sure, but she thought she saw Mayuki smile...

" I'm sorry, Sensei... "

Kiyone wasn't sure, but she thought Katsuhito saw Mayuki's smile, before she put on her WHO ME? face...

" One must always keep his mind on what they're doing, distractions... "

Kiyone saw Katsuhito look directly at Mayuki...

" Will get you killed... "

Noticing the time, he sighed...

" That's it for today... One lap around the lake, then get cleaned up for dinner... "

Rogon bowed, then turned and started jogging down the path towards the top on the stairs leading down to the Lake and house...

After watching his student disappear, Katsuhito turned to Kiyone and looked Mayuki in the eye...

" That wasn't very nice, young lady... "

Smiling, he looked up at a stunned Kiyone...

" We'd better get going or Rogon will beat us to the table... "

Smiling, Kiyone lifted Mayuki to her shoulder before standing...

Some times she wondered whether Mayuki got her sense of humor from her father, Tenchi, her grandfather, Nobuyuki or her great-grandfather Katsuhito?...

She was positive she didn't get it from her great-great-grandfather Azusa Masaki Jurai, the Emperor of the Juraian Empire...

Well, at least reasonably positive...

Carrying Mayuki, she followed Tenchi's grandfather back towards the house...

( Aboard the Ryo-Ohki...)

According to Ryo-Ohki, they were only an hour or so away from the edge of the area known as the Badlands...

At present speed, it was about another hour, at least, to get to the final coordinate within the Badlands...

Tenchi had the bridge all to him self, as all the girls, including Washu, were getting some much needed sleep...

Washu had put her foot down and made it quite clear that they needed to be at their very best when they got there...

Olde Sam had reported that there were still a lot of Raider activity in and around the final coordinate area...

One or two might not be too bad, but lately they seem to be running around in pack of half a dozen ships or so...

Washu just wanted to slip in very quietly, have a look around, then quickly retire...

Tenchi hopes so too...

However, one of his grandfather's old saying kept returning...

" A battle plan never survives contact with the enemy!... "

Since meeting Ryoko and the others, he'd found this saying to be very true...

( Juraian Royal Palace... )

Queen Funaho Jurai sat on the the stone bench, in the shade and watched as the young children played on the large section of freshly cut grass...

There were a number of adults standing around the grass area, also watching the children, chatting with each other and smiling...

They were the people who had been chosen to take care of these children, who had just recently been made wards of the Juraian Royal Family...

The boys had tutors and the girls had governesses...

At the moment, every one was taking one of several breaks between the daily lessons...

Queen Funaho, smiled as she watched the young ones play, her co-Queen Misaki had been right about taking the children in...

For the first time in more than 700 years, there was once again laughter within the Royal palace...

It took her back to the wonderful days when Yosho, then Ayeka and Sasami had been children...

With the long lives that Juraians enjoyed, these children were new born...

Like Tenchi and his family, they were the future of Jurai, of the Galaxy...

It had been Tenchi, in front of a blushing Ayeka, who'd commented on how well Ayeka and Sasami had been brought up...

As well as his grandfather Yosho...

That perhaps the Queens would be willing to see that the children, that young Kei Tanaka had rescued, received a proper education...

Emperor Azusa had stood to the side, showing no emotion, but his eyes were aglow...

He watched as the Queens, as well as Tenchi's wives, melted at his glowing comments...

He saw, in Tenchi, a lot of his own son, Yosho...

He had no doubt that Yosho had a hand in molding Tenchi into the person he was today...

But he also saw a lot of Tenchi's father, Nobuyuki, in Tenchi too...

That stubborn, determined resolve that had helped Tenchi defeat Kagato...

Also that shy tenderness, that had drawn three strong, attractive female to him, seem to have also come from that side of the family...

Later, when Nobuyuki's Lighthawk wing had appeared, Azusa's opinion of Tenchi and his world began to change...

Kagato's defeat, the Pirate attack on Jurai, Tenchi's multi wedding, the attempt on his own life, Tenchi's baby daughter Mayuka's appearance, the return of Lord Tanaka's son, the influx of children to the Royal Palace, life had been any thing but dull since Yosho's return...

Washu had suggested that there was something more to Juraian colonial world 0315...

Now Azusa was beginning to wonder what other surprises might be in store...

( Ryo-Ohki's Bridge...)

When they reached the frontier, Tenchi had gone into the back and let Washu know that they reached the spot where she wanted to be awaken...

Washu had told Tenchi to let the girls rest as long as posible, it was so hard to get the girls to relax these days...

Without Tenchi there with them, that is...

Ryo-Ohki was moving along at a cautious speed, it's scanners were set to maximum range and all shields up...

They would have plenty of warning of other ships getting close and any that did get close wouldn't be able to detect them due to the special stealth shields Washu had recently installed in Ryo-Ohki...

When she got to the bridge, Washu had darken the bridge to help them adjust their eyes to the dark and Tenchi was standing, looking out the forward screen at the darkness...

Unlike earlier, there was nothing to see since there was very few stars within the Badlands, therefore, there was no starlight and no twinkling lights...

Just pitch darkness, in a dead wilderness...

( A Darkened Room... )

There was a deadly silence in the room, a very deadly silence indeed...

The gun resting on the stone table, before their leader, wasn't there for show...

He'd used it more than once, when some one had some how displeased him...

As such, no one wished to speak up, they only spoke when spoken to...

" WHAT IS THE LATEST WORD FROM OUR RESEARCHERS?... "

A figure at the other end of the table stood, slowly...

" They are continuing to look for any reference to ELEMENT X... But they have also come upon references to several other projects may show promise, as well... "

" SUCH AS?... "

The figure looked around, but no one offered any help, he was on his own...

" One is a device that we believe can suppress various forms of energy... It has already shown that it can limit power weapons within a short distance, but they are working on upgrading it so it might work over a larger area... "

The figure hesitated...

" AND?... "

Taking a deep breath he continued...

" There has been some discussion as to if it might not also be able to suppress other forms of power sources... "

He looked around in the silence...

" Perhaps even those powers used by people like the space pirate Ryoko or even the Royal Family... "

The leader didn't say any thing, he just smiled...

( Ryo-Ohki's Bridge...)

Shortly before getting to the coordinates Washu wanted, Tenchi had gotten the girls up...

Now they were sitting in their chairs, Ryoko had a smirk on her face, Ayeka was shaking her head, Mihoshi was sound asleep, Tenchi was smiling and Washu was trying very hard to keep a straight face...

As Washu re-examined her calculations, Ryoko got up and walked over to where Washu was sitting...

" What's taking so long?... You were the one in such a hurry before... "

Washu didn't even look up from her laptop...

" According to the data you recovered before, a number of the the scanner globes were destroyed near this spot when they went into sub space... "

She paused...

" Therefore, I'm going to launch some globes to make real sure that there's nothing waiting for us in sub space... "

Looking up, she saw that Ryoko's eyes had widened...

Ryoko returned to her chair, next to Tenchi, shaken...

Reaching over Tenchi took her hand, he also took Ayeka's...

And they continued to wait...

( Olde Sam's Tavern... )

The tavern was a mess, finding the population of the small planet gone, as well as the guards that were left behind, the Raiders had searched every where and finding nothing they had taken out their frustration on the only things left, the settlement its self...

What they couldn't smash, they tried to burn, but as the buildings were built from old starship hulks, they tended to be fireproof, as well as some what resistant to heavy weapons fire...

That had just added to their frustration...

Because of the metal in the buildings and the elements in the surface soil, it would take weapons fire from a number of the Raider ships to cause any real damage and then it was far more bother than it was worth...

Sort of like trying to shoot small boulders with a cannon...

Sam smiled as he watched the destruction from his backup office down in the colony's underground emergency cavern...

As it would have been imposable to hide from Kagato, so they'd learned to live duel lives...

In the last couple of decades, due to pirates, raiders and Kagato, most of the population had pretty much taken to living within rooms cut out of the stone walls of the cavern...

Above ground was more for the few visitors who happen to drop by, usually people they didn't want to have hanging around...

Sam couldn't help chuckling as the Raiders spent an hour searching and then destroying every thing in his office...

As his tavern office was really multi-floored, that room had been a fake...

In an emergency, the room would be lowered into the ground and then any one entering through the door from the tavern bar room would find themselves in the fake office built on top of his REAL office...

There was also several feet of metal and very special insulation preventing scanners from detecting the real room below...

Sam had it built after Kagato destroyed his original tavern, shortly after that mysterious disappearance of Ryoko, 700 years before...

That was also when they had started to rebuilt the other buildings from the space hulls that Kagato had caught, examined, then dumped in a crater on the other side of the small planetoid...

Over the centuries the crater had became Kagato's garbage dump...

It was there that Sam had recovered some GP badges and other unusual stuff...

As for the people of the settlement, Kagato let them live because he so enjoyed seeing the fear on their faces whenever he visited, it was an ego boost...

So, when the locals discovered who had removed Kagato, Tenchi had became the second most popular male in the entire galaxy...

If there was any place, other than Jurai or Earth, where Tenchi and his family was safe, it was on this small planetoid...

Sam shook his head at the destruction the Raiders had caused...

But after all the centuries of having to put up with Kagato, these guys were nothing more than some irritating bugs...

In fact, to take every one's minds off what was happening on the surface, he had organized a crew of local males for a little project in the main cavern...

Sort of as a thank you present for Tenchi and the others, he was having the Masaki house recreated on the shore of the underground lake...

With Washu's help, blueprints and pictures sent by the new communication unit, it was nearing completion...

It would have the dock and every thing...

A short time before, a small package had showed up at the cavern entrance, out of no where...

Just a small box, about a foot square, with a small button on it...

The note with it said that the button should only be pressed in a very large, open area...

When that was done, the box had quickly expanded to a container the size of a small house, inside was duplicates of the furniture and appliances at the Masaki house...

That had been Washu's little donation to the new house...

Sam wondered when Tenchi and the others might be back in the area again...

( Aboard Ryo-Ohki...)

Washu had checked her figures three more times and then had several of her small globes do a quick jumps into sub space...

They reported nothing within several kilometers of their spots, so it was safe to jump to sub space...

After double checking every thing, one more time, Tenchi gave Ryo-ohki the word to jump...

Except for a slight dizzyness, the jump was successful...

As expected, the view outside remained pitch dark, Washu was again back on her keyboard...

After a while she spoke without looking up...

" Ryo-ohki?... Turn 96 degrees to you left and up 62 degrees... "

Do to the gravity fields, no one felt Ryo-ohki's movement...

The screen remained black, but Ryoko suddenly spoke up...

" Ryo-ohki!!!... Magnify by a power of 30... "

A very tiny dot became a larger dot of light...

Washu was the next to speak...

" Ryo-ohki!!!... Magnify by a power of 40... "

The large dot got much bigger...

Ayeka was the the next to speak...

" Washu... What is that?... "

Washu smile as she continued to work her keyboard...

" That, my dear princess is a star... "

Ayeka and Ryoko stared at her, Mihoshi was still asleep...

" A STAR?... "

Washu smiled, they'd both replied as one...

" Yes... A Star, a white dwarf... And before you ask... No, it shouldn't be here in sub space... "

Ayeka and Ryoko were staring out the main screen at the small light, surrounded by pitch darkness...

( GP Headquarters... )

Grand Marshal Kuramitsu had spent most of the day reading reports from the frontier about Raider activity...

For the past week, or so, the only Raider activity was in the badlands...

Using a secure communications number, he had managed to talk to a gentleman who lived out in the Badlands, whom Washu called Sam...

Their polite conversation was very enlightning...

Thou reluctant to talk at first, the two came to a gentleman's agreement about any request for information...

The Grand Marshal understood the tavern owner's reluctance and agreed to certain guidelines, the same Washu was using...

Within a short time the Marshal became aware of a lot of things that his patrol units had missed, especially all the local Raider activity...

Sam had been reluctant to provide any data at first, until he realized how helpful this new source of information could be...

It didn't take much to convence him that this was good for the settlement...

Beside, Washu had commented that Mihoshi's grandfather could be trusted...

And Ryoko's mother had already proven that, like her daughter, she could be trusted...

When the Marshal heard about the Raiders attack, he asked if a GP or Jurai Task force might be of service?...

Sam had thanked him but declined, that would bring unwanted attention and was unnecessary at the moment...

The Marshal agreed, but let him know that if there was any thing they needed to contact him...

After a some thought, Sam asked his opinion...

When Sam showed him the NEW Masaki house, the Marshal was quite impressed...

Sam took him for a general tour of the insides and outsides...

When asked for any suggestions, the only comment was that it be built with VERY strong walls...

Sam replied that the entire building was being constructed of energy resistant material...

They both got a good laugh out of that one...

Before closing, the Marshal ask Sam to keep him updated when he could...

As the Com screen went blank, the Marshal considered having a talk with Washu about other possible contact points around the Galaxy...

Small outposts at points of conflict, like the Raynza Republic, to provide important first hand data directly to his office...

He filed it away as he activated his screen and called up the images of the new house...

He smiled, he could just imagine Mihoshi asleep out on that dock and Tenchi would be relieved to hear about the energy resistant material...

He could almost see the look on Ayeka and Ryoko's faces when they learn about it...

He just had to chuckle about that...

( Back aboard Ryo-Ohki... )

Washu had spent quite some time gathering data, while the others stared at the only bit of light, a small white dwarf star...

" H..humm!!!... "

Every one turned to see a smiling Washu, not a good sign...

" Ryo-Ohki!... Turn 180!... "

After a few minutes, something appeared on the main screen...

It appeared to be another distant star, but something was wrong...

It twinkled...

Tenchi was the first to say any thing...

" Washu?... "

" Yes?... Tenchi... "

She had a big smile as she answered...

" Is that a star?... And in space, stars don't twinkle?... "

She was proud of him...

" Correct on both questions... Stars don't twinkle and that is light from a star... Light from the white dwarf behind us!... "

She just loved the way their jaws dropped...

" What you are seeing is the same thing you'd see if you walked out of the Masaki house, onto the dock on a dark, starly night and looked into the water... "

Three sets of eyes widened ( the fourth were still shut and asleep )...

" What you're seeing is the light from the small white dwarf star being reflected in what appears to be a liquid of some kind... "

"But!!!... But!!!... But!!!... But!!!... "

Smiling, Washu stood and put a finger to Tenchi's lips...

" ...When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth!... "

" Sherlock Holmes!!!... Arthur Conan Doyle!!!... "

Every one stared at the still sleeping Mihoshi...

Washu smiled and shook her head...

" Any way!!!... Having digested all the data from before and now... I have come up with one very fantastic answer... "

She paused and every one moved closer...

" We're within a Dyson Sphere... "

All three faces were blank...

Closing her eyes, she counted to ten before continuing...

" A Dyson Sphere was named for the earth scientist who first came up with the idea... He suggested the building of a huge thin globe around the sun... The inner skin of the globe would capture and use 100 per cent of the energy the sun expelled... This skin could also be used house a population beyond count... "

Three mouths were still open, she sighed...

" From my rough calculations... I estimate a good portion of the Juraian Empire could live on the inner skin of this sphere... Of course that depends on what the surface is really like... That appears to be water... Below us?... "

All eyes turned to the screen again...

" My scans indicate huge areas of land, including forest and mountains, as well as vast seas... And I haven't covered a quarter of the sphere's surface... "

She could see even Ayeka was having trouble with the concept...

" OK... Does every one remember the small ping-pong balls from last Halloween?... "

The girls remembered how much fun it was popping them, but they made a real mess...

" You all saw how thin the shells were... OK, now imagine a tiny glowing ash floating at the center of one of those balls... "

She saw them all nod...

" OK... Now, imaging that ash is the earth's sun... "

Three sets of eyebrows went up...

" Now cover the inside of the ball with land and water... You now have a Dyson Sphere... "

Ayeka looked at the screen then Washu...

" Is such a thing really possible?... "

Washu smiled...

" Until a few hours ago, I didn't believe it ether... But there it is... The power from the white dwarf is being used to keep every thing in sub space... And any thing trying to pass through here in sub space, runs smack into the outer hull... "

They all stared at the screen...

Washu was smiling, her paper on this discovery was going to get her back into the Science Academy...

They'd all laughed at her, she'd show them...

Ayeka was hanging onto Tenchi's arm for support, something about this place made her nervous...

Ryoko had Tenchi's Left arm, just because Ayeka had his Right...

Tenchi was looking at Mihoshi and wishing this was all just a dream...

" MREOW!!!... "

Ryoko released Tenchi and hurried to the control board, leaving the others standing there...

Checking a number of things she looked up at the screen, then at Washu...

" What is it?... "

A big smile formed on her face...

" Before you go hunting for some prime beach front property, MOM... You might want to check with the local residences... "

Ryoko enjoyed the look of surprise on Washu's face...

" We're being hailed from below... "

End of PRINCESS, PIRATE, POLICEWOMAN, WIFE...