Subject: [FFML] [TM!] [3-D] Mechanics of a Downfall
From: "Nikholas F. Toledo Zu" <niftol@i-manila.com.ph>
Date: 7/26/1998, 7:49 AM
To: ffml@fanfic.com

Let's forget.

	let's forget that the Tenchi OAV series ends with Serio and Azusa
and the appearance of the mothers.

	let's forget that Pioneer ever had any plans on it beyond the 13
episodes (well, maybe plus the Mihoshi special, since there was no other
Tenchi universe at the time).

	in fact, let's forget altogether that there were any other Tenchis,
even if it does mean that Kiyone is somewhere stuck on the remains of some
unnamed mad scientist's lair, and Pretty Sammy is silently working at
Galaxy Police HQ.

let's forget that I have twenty-odd fanfics to plug, 3 whole webpages to
revamp, and the fact that the Entertainment Capital of UP Village is about 
to pack up and leave.

forgot all that?  what else to we have to not-assume for our suspension of
disbelief to work, and for this blurb to end?

don't look.

***

The weak link.

The killer watched from peripheral vision as the players milled the room, 
going about, efficiently sliding into the roles they were made to play.  
She herself merely waits, as the pieces have only started to fall into 
place, and the cast had not been completed.  Time will come, and finally, 
finally, the great game will wind down.  And she would make sure that she 
would be in position for the final tableau.

Her slender fingers rolled over her skin, under her chin.  The minute 
motions traced fine patterns of blood vessels dispensing and collecting 
vital nutrients to her very cells.  Seated in her right palm, her carotid 
artery powerfully beat a pattern of life, a mantra warding off the death 
that could be caused by even the slightest of well-placed pressures...

She submerged into the darkness...

***

The sun bid farewell to the house so conveniently located near the Masaki 
Shrine, beautifully streaking red the arboreal sky.  The lake glistened 
with recognition, two rival ships whose husks lay cracked and scarred at 
the bottom, one placed slightly out-of-sync in parallel-pocket dimension, 
and one rooted in the nearby forest waved goodnight to the alien star 
that veered beyond the horizon, revealing the perfect mask of space.

Katsuhito Masaki stood stock still, arms crossed, eyeing as best he could 
from the shrine the house where his past hobnobbed with his future.  His 
meditations as of late had been untranquil, disturbed.  Invariably, it 
would be during the periods of cease-fire in the household in the valley, 
when and where neither hide nor hair of conflict or battle ensued, when 
he would feel the numbing sensation that usually accompanied the 
unsuccessful transition to astral space.

It was not merely an insessorial annoyance or an impish impetus, it came 
more of a maddening realization of anarchy, or a fanciful appeal of 
entropy to his intellect.  The atmosphere seemed to beg for chaos, and it 
crawled across his skin, goose-pimply and slithering.

He thought he knew what it was:  seven hundred years were not enough to 
still the warrior blood in his veins.  The fight had never gone out, only 
hid, until it effected manifestations, first in his grandson's spirit, 
and now in his own unfettered passions for the glorious fight.  His 
fading memories of Ryoko and Jurai still bled his calm resolve, but they 
were two-dimensional and distant horizons, shadows of the immediacy which 
came with it when.

At that, he nodded, thinking that the problem was over, and got up to 
make some tea.

***

Sasami peered into the living room.

Most of them were there, of course.  She started counting heads...  
Ryoko, check.  Ayeka, check.  Ryo-oh-ki... hmmm... yes, beneath the 
dinner table, check.  Mihoshi, check.  Tenchi's father, in his room, 
check.  Washu, in the lab.  Check.  Err.  Wait.  Washu, in the lab.

"Dinner's ready!  Could someone please get Wa-?"

"I'll go!"  The figure made its way to the portal under the stairs.

"Oh.  Okay."  She pulled herself back inside to bring in the meal.

***

Washu heard the "alarm" signaling that someone had entered the room.  
"Hullo?"  No one.  She turned back - then turned back and low.  No baby.

"Hmm.  Wondered where I got that idea."  She went back to typing on her 
laptop.

She'd been monitoring the progress of growth of Ryo-Oh's seed, and its 
effects on the laboratory as a whole.  She knew that it wasn't standard 
operating procedure (hell, she knew that nothing was made in any normal 
laboratory unless it was under the most tedious of controlled environs), 
but the power that was Jurai (or a sample of it) was best experienced, 
rather than observed.

For one, the air always seemed a little bit cleaner.

Other than that, she herself had had no experience of difference 
whatsoever.  The computers, however, always seemed to like its company, 
and she had caught them several times deep in data transferrence.

If they want to keep me out of their fun, she thought glumly, then let 
them go right ahead.  And that was the last of that.

However, her readings have been erratic as of late.  The growth, which 
was rather quick - not unusual for a royal tree of Jurai, had been slowed 
up to about 87% that rate.  What was unusual was that there was no reason 
for this to happen, and that it had happened instantaneously.

She was about to analyze a sample of soil when someone held her by the 
sides of the head and - *crack*.

On the impossible angle Washu's head hung on top of her body, the killer 
said, "oh, did I do that?"

***

Switch
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