This is the entire story so far... more later..



TMiL: "The Operative and the Schoolgirl"

DISCLAIMER: I didn't create the characters. They were created by
the wonderful people at Pioneer/AIC.

EDITOR's NOTE: This story takes place *DURING* Tenchi Muyo in Love,
but in a slightly different universe. There are some scenes from the
movie in this story as a result.




      He was cute.
      That was the first thing Tanaka had thought when a young man
 with chestnut brown hair and eyes of pale silver, which sometimes
 looked golden when the light hit them just right, walked into the
 classroom for the first time.
      The other students had their own opinions of their new classmate.
      "Spooky." Some said.
      "Creepy." Others agreed.
      "His eyes are weird." One elucidated. "His pupils are slitted."
      "Like an animal's eyes." Another agreed.
      It was clear that the new student was feeling self-conscious
 about all this talk. He had taken to keeping to himself, sitting quietly,
 not raising his hand in class, even taking lunch by himself.
      Tanaka could sense deep sadness in him, sadness he tried desparately
 to hide behind a facade of stoicism. Or perhaps he was in shock, she told
 herself.

      But why? She wondered. People just didn't wander around in shock for
 no good reason, did they? So what had happened to him? She thought of 
 asking the teacher, but the regular teacher was out and the new substitute
 seemed to have been picked from the bottom of the barrel. She was fairly
 good, but she got frazzled easily and seemed jittery in the way a bunny in
 a fox's den might seem jittery.

      The sound of the bus coming to a stop pulled Tanaka's mind back to the
 present. She stepped off, cheerfully, and made her way into the crowd on
 the school lawn. She could see the young boy in one of the nearby rows and
 she smiled to herself.

      The morning was pretty much the same as always at first, then Tanaka
 remembered she still had a magazine a friend of hers, Achika, had loaned
 her. Achika, her friend, confidante, and one of the finest people she'd
 ever know.  Achika, who just happened, Tanaka smiled to herself, to be in
 the same homeroom as the young man she'd fallen in love with.

       After asking politely to be excused, Tanaka rushed to get to the
 classroom where Achika and that wonderful boy were attending. She raced in
 and saw him leaning on the window. He was gazing, intently, at Achika, and
 for a moment Tanaka thought her heart would shatter. Was this young man in
 love with Achika? Then Tanaka realized that it wasn't love she saw in the
 young man's eyes, but fierce protectiveness, not the protectiveness of a
 lover, but of a self-appointed bodyguard. "Like a secret serviceman in
 class with the President's daughter." she told herself later, recalling an
 old American joke, which she'd heard from an American exchange student,
 and she hadn't been far from the truth.
	"Achika," She called, hoarsely, she was, after all, just recovering
 from a sore throat and had, truthfully, only seen the new boy on the first
 day he'd arrived, "I'm returning your magazine."
	"I haven't seen you for days, Tanaka." Achika smiled. "How's your
 cold?"
	"I still have a sore throat, but I've got a test, too." Tanaka
 explained.
	Nobuyuki blushed as Achika paused by his desk and waved to him.
 Tanaka could see that he was in love with her and wished that the boy 
 would love her just as much as they loved each other.  "Achika, are you 
 listening to me?"
	"Yes." Achika turned away from Nobuyuki for the moment and went
 over to her friend.
	The two discussed the articles Tanaka had read while the boy
 Tanaka was so deeply infatuated with gazed over in their direction.
 Tanaka wished he was looking at her with love in his eyes, but she knew
 it was Achika he was looking at. He's being protective again, she told
 herself.
	She smiled to herself, then frowned. Why was he being so
 protective of Achika? He wasn't in love with her, just protective. Tanaka
 wondered if he knew of some danger Achika was in. If so, why hadn't he
 told the teachers? Or hadn't he? He did seem a bit more mature than the
 other students. Maybe he really was a secret service man, or some kind of
 secret agent, she thought, maybe he's here to stop something awful from
 happening to Achika. These were, of course, only her way of adding a bit
 of intrigue to her mental picture of him. She had absolutely no idea that
 she happened to be right.
	The girl with spiked blue hair was looking at the chestnut haired
 boy with a look of bitter mistrust and he quickly turned away, looking out
 the window. Achika, who hadn't noticed that he was watching her, returned
 to her seat while Tanaka blew the chestnut haired boy a kiss. He must have
 caught what she'd done out the corner of his eye, because Tanaka fancied
 she caught a hint of a blush on the boy's alabaster cheeks. She blushed a
 little, too, at her own forwardness, then rushed back to her own homeroom.
	He was sitting alone at lunch, as he always did, and Tanaka almost
 sat with him. Almost. As she reached his table, she could have sworn she
 heard him growl at her, or maybe he was arguing with a tough bit of meat.
 He didn't have the best table manners in the world, she'd noticed, but a
 boy as cute as he was could afford to be impolite now and again. After 
 all, she told herself, everyone was entitled to one or two faults. He
 had brought his own meal, not that anyone blamed him, school lunches are
 notorious for tasting horrible, which consisted of spareribs and some 
 teriyaki steak and was tearing at them, growling with each bite, like some
 wild animal enjoying its meal and warning off scavengers. The growl was
 frightening and Tanaka told herself he was obvious not in the mood for 
 company, so she sat at a nearby table, keeping her eye on him. When he was
 finished, he licked the teriyaki sauce from his hands and then lickgroomed
 his face to clean off any teriyaki sauce that might have got there. He
 quickly finished and took a sip of his milk. A moment later, he crushed
 the small carton in his hand as if he'd suddenly realized what he'd done
 and was angry at himself for such a major slip-up. He got up and walked 
 over to the door with an amazing amount of dignity considering how he'd 
 been acting during lunch, slipping a hand into a pocket so he appeared
 almost regal, then tossed his milk carton into the trash as he left the
 room.
	Back in class, Tanaka found herself seated next to the boy who
 she had been daydreaming of all day. With him so close, she found it
 difficult to concentrate on her studies. He was very handsome, she
 reasoned, that's why she couldn't keep her mind on her schoolwork, and
 she was falling in love with him. She blushed at the thought, knowing
 in her heart that he would've blushed, too, if he could've read it.
 Whatever traumas he may have faced, and something, perhaps that latent
 maternal instinct in all women, told her he'd faced more than his
 share of them, she was sure, somehow, that he was as pure as she was. 
	"That might be a problem on our wedding night." she remarked,
 not realizing at first that she'd spoken aloud.
	He looked over at her with a bewildered expression on his face and
 his head cocked to one side in puzzlement.
	Tanaka realized she'd spoken out and blushed, deeply, turning red
 all over.
 She looked totally flustered. "Oh my!" she gasped, in a state
 of near-panic. "Oh dear..." The boy put a hand onto hers, meaning to
 soothe her and easy her mind. Instead, the act had just the opposite
 effect. Her heart leaped up into her throat and the butterflies that
 were in her stomach began to dance the minute waltz. Then he looked at
 her and she saw the twin slits of his pupils up close for the first
 time. Those eyes, entrancing, exotic, they held her spellbound for a
 moment and she gazed back up into them, her own eyes shining with love
 and admiration, and perhaps just a twinge of fear. He leaned forward and
 she wondered if he was going to kiss her. The butterflies gave up the 
 minute waltz in favor of mimicking the combat of her favorite anime
 series' mecha and she thought she would faint.
	Just then, the schoolbell rang.
        "Damn," she though to herself, though she was too polite to say
 the word aloud.
	The boy pulled away and started off for the next class on his
 schedule and Tanaka did likewise. As it happened, they were down the
 hall from each other, a fact that Tanaka made note of as they entered
 their classrooms. She wondered if she could get herself transfered into
 his class. But what reason would she give the teachers? She surely could
 not tell them she wanted to attend the class because she was in love
 with this student.
	She politely asked to be excused, lying about having to use the
 facilities, and quietly made her way down the hall. She knew it was wrong
 but she could not get his hypnotic eyes out of her mind. She had to see
 him again. She stopped at the door of his classroom and peeked through
 the small window atop the door, she was a little too short to do it on 
 her own and needed to stand on a chair.
	The new janitress joined her and she stumbled back in surprise,
 falling off the chair. The woman caught her with surprising ease and
 Tanaka thought she must be a martial arts student, a brown belt at the
 very least.
	"Is this what they mean by falling in love?" the janitress
 kidded her.
	Tanaka blushed, deeply. Was it really that obvious? She tried
 to make a witty comeback, but it died in her throat. She had fallen
 in love. There was no denying it. But who was he? She realized she
 had no idea of this and it took her by surprise. She'd heard a few
 rumors in the locker room, one suggested that his parents had abandonned
 him at birth because of his strange eyes, another said that they were
 both dead, a third combined the first two, saying they'd killed
 themselves because they'd believed they'd brought a demon or monster
 into the world. The first and third of these made Tanaka very angry. She
 could not believe anyone could abandon a boy as handsome as he was. She
 wanted to marry him, to give him a family and perhaps let him take her
 last name if he didn't have one of his own. If this boy had spent his
 entire life unloved, she wanted to be the one to give him all the love
 he'd missed, to make sure he was never without it again.
	"Don't worry," the janitress smiled, "your secret's safe with me.
 So, which one do you like?"

	"The chestnut haired boy." Tanaka whispered back.
	"Naoki?" the janitress asked.
	"Naoki." Tanaka whispered, mostly to herself, saying the name with
 the love and reverence people usually reserved for the supreme being of
 their choice. "Is it true that he was abandonned because of his eyes?"
 she asked.
	"His eyes?" the janitress asked. She looked at the boy in question
 and soon saw what Tanaka was referring to. Eyes of pale silver, turning 
 pale gold when the light hit them just right, pupils slitted like those
 of an animal. She'd seen those eyes before, she realized, but in a much
 different face. If only she could remember...  "I see what you mean." she
 said aloud. "I think he's an orphan." she said, getting it right but not
 realizing it. "My name's Kiyone."
	"Tanaka." Tanaka replied.
	"I'm pleased to meet you, Tanaka."
	Tanaka turned her gaze back to the boy in the classroom and
 Kiyone	returned to her janitorial duties, wondering where she'd seen eyes
 like that before.
	The schoolbell rang and Tanaka barely made it off the chair and
 out of the way before a horde of students ran out of the door she'd
 been standing in front of. She stood there panting as they rushed by, 
 then a horrible realization took her. She'd missed her entire third
 period class, staring at a boy she knew nothing about. The teacher would
 be livid when she saw her the next day! Tanaka hurried to her next class
 and took her seat. As it happened, the boy was in this class with her,
 too, and again they were seated next to one and other.

	The boy sighed and slumped over his desk. His posture usually
 varied between two favorite poses, slumped over, or rigidly upright with
 his arms folded in front of him. On occasion he wore an expression of
 fierce rage, as if a bitter memory had surfaced, but most times his face
 looked like all the sorrow in the universe had decided that his soul was
 a nice place to live. He'd never smiled in all the time Tanaka had seen
 him, his lips always either noncommittally straight or set in a frown.
 He put his face in his hands and Tanaka thought he was going to cry. She
 hadn't seen him do this yet, but given his general mood, she was sure 
 tears weren't far away. Tanaka reached over and patted his head, kindly.
 "Don't worry," she told him, her voice kind, "it'll be all right."
	He grunted derisively, as if to say "nothing will ever be all
 right again." and didn't look up at her.
	She knew it was early to say this, but she thought it might cheer
 him up a bit, so she told him: "I think I love you."
	"And I know that you don't." he replied, bitterly, with an edge
 to his voice that would've cut diamonds.
	Tanaka was rather taken aback by this and blinked away tears.
 He's just acting this way because he's upset, she told herself. Out loud
 she said, "No, you don't know that."
	"Yes, I do." He snapped. "And if you do love me, you'd be better
 off if you didn't."
	"I find that hard to believe." Tanaka told him. "And if you're
 trying to stop me from loving you, I don't think you'll be able to."
	"Suit yourself." The boy told her. "If you want to throw your
 life away, that's fine with me."
	That remark confused Tanaka? What did loving him have to do
 with throwing her life away? She asked and got a startling answer;
	"Everyone I ever love dies." He warned. "I loved my parents and
 they died. I loved the people who took me in when I was orphanned and
 now they're dead, too. Now, please, stop loving me. Your life depends on
 it."
	That shook her pretty badly, but wasn't enough to deter her.
	"I'll die eventually anyhow without loving you." She told him,
 "So I might as well love you while I can."
	"Have it your way." He snorted at her. But within him, his heart
 ached more than ever. True love was, at last, in his grasp, but he dared
 not reach out for it. He was right about the ones he loved dying. He'd 
 seen it on a far off world, when a madman had killed his parents and his
 people, and again in a distant place where an escaped supercriminal had
 murdered his friends and colleagues. Now that supercriminal was on its
 way to this planet and he was the planet's... the universe's... only
 hope. He had watched the others, and he knew they had enough power to 
 stop Kain if they knew how to harness it, but Ryoko and Ayeka were always
 fighting and he was sure that they didn't have the discipline or the
 ability to work together that would be needed to do the job. No, he told
 himself, it's up to me. I have to stop him, even if it means I myself must
 die.
	The teacher ahemed loudly and Tanaka returned her attention to the
 front of the classroom. The teacher ahemed, again, this one meant for the
 boy Tanaka had been consoling.	In his mind, the boy considered ignoring
 the teacher. It didn't matter whether he passed or failed this class,
 after all he was only there to bide time until he confronted his foe.
 When his enemy had been vanquished, he'd return to his own ... he
 remembered, then, that he had no place to return to and he sank even
 deeper into a state of depression. Anger boiled in him and rage came,
 once again, into his eyes.





Lt. Trakal, Galaxy Police
Code name: Operative A