<Unlurk>

Hi there! (for wont of a more inspired greeting)

This is my first fic - the first that I'm prepared to post out here, anyway.
C&C will be posted on my wall and kept forever. Flames will be extinguished.
^_-

Crosswise is, at first, a bit of a mystery. It should take a while to figure
out what the hell's really going on. O!MG and TM! are the main fics in the
crossover (for now). There are two others, as revealed in the opening credits,
but don't expect more than a hint of them for quite some time.

Crosswise, Christopher Wiseman, Katherine Kusunagi and Edward Vaeden are my
original characters. Please ask before borrowing them (as if anyone would
_want_ to borrow them...)

Both Ah! Megami-sama and Tenchi Muyo! are copyrights of their respective
owners. This is a non-profit endeavor, purely for the enjoyment of myself and
others. Please don't sue me, I'm a student and have no money anyway!

A huge thank you to my overly patient pre-readers, Dave Row, Eric Jones and
Richard Drysdale.

Without further ado, Run VT!

21st Century Wolf vaguely Presents:
A Wild Hunt Production

The Oh! My Goddess Cast
The Tenchi Crew
&
Christopher Wiseman as:

CROSSWISE
by Thomas "Hunter" Maund

Prelude:

Darkness.

A single shaft of light, like a spear, illuminating a figure in a chair.

"The accused will stand."

He does so, turning his face upwards towards the voice.

"Christopher Michael Wiseman, you have been found guilty of murder, resisting
arrest and misuse of linear equipment leading to a major temporospatial
imbalance in the four raw primal elemental forces. Do you have anything to say
before we pass sentence?"

"Err...."

The interuption from above was stern in the extreme. "You've endangered all of
existance! Don't you have _anything_ to say for yourself?!"

"I'm sorry? It was an accident? It'll never happen again?" the figure leaned
forward. "I'm really _really_  sorry?"

The voice from above the figure sounded disgusted. "Enough. Given your recent
record, I feel bound to call for the maximum sentence." the figure winced.
"You are hereby stripped of your rank and priviledges as Linear Executive
first class, barred from ever re-entering the proffession or further dealing
with linear matters, and are banished forever from Axis and it's
subsidiaries."

"Well, that wasn't _so_ bad." muttered the figure, perhaps a tad
optimistically.

"In addition, you will be executed."

"Oh, bugger."

"You shall be taken from this place and forthwith used as the soul-focus of
the spell required to calm the elemental disturbance you yourself created. You
will not, of course, survive this experience. Do you have any last requests?"

"Yeah! Don't kill me!!!"

"You know very well we cannot grant that request, Mister Wiseman."

The man slumped in to his chair. For once, the first and only time in the
trial,
the voice ignored his breach of court protocol. He spoke, too quiet for anyone
else to  hear.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I said, 'Then maybe I'd better choose a place to die.'"

* * *
Season 1
* * *
Episode 1: Rebirth

Prologue:

It's _hot_. The kind of hot you can only get near the equator in the middle of
desert at noon on a really, really bad day. When they say it's hot enough to
fry an egg on the sidewalk, you can tell they've never been here.

Walk to the top the dune, gaze through the haze across the plain. It's not
exactly normal; the sand stops dead at the edge of glass as smooth as sheet.
It's not a small area either, a perfect circle six miles across. If you were
an expert, you might just be able to tell that an event had occured here long
ago so violent that it had fused the sand of the plain in to solid glass. Of
course, then you might start asking why the plain was a perfect circle, or why
so little sand had blown on to it, rather than covering it up. You also might
ask questions about why the plain was perfectly smooth, and about the symbols
apparently carved in to the glass _beneath_ it's flawless surface.

Of course, first you'd have to see through the illusionary spell hiding the
place from prying eyes...

In the exact centre of the plain, on top of one of those symbols, lies a
figure. If he's been here for any length of time, he ought already to be dead
from the heat. Especially as he isn't wearing anything.

After some time, the figure's head shifts slightly...

Intense light, unimaginable pain and then.... what? Slowly, he tried to move.
He could feel sand in his hair and  on his face. His body felt too stiff, too
insubstantial too. He opened his eyes. It felt like trying to open a steel
shutter without mechanical assistance. Everything was a blurred mass of
colour.  He stared hard, and after a while the glass beneath him swam in to
focus.

It should probably be noted at this point that the way the sun was shining at
this point made the upper layer of the glass very much like a mirror.

Staring at the face a few inches in front of him, the man spoke with
difficulty - a difficulty that had nothing at all to do with dehydration.

"Who the hell are you?"

* * *

[Opening Titles]

[Panning shot of a lake at night]

Let's go down to the sound tonight.
Tide is low, we can walk on water.

[Crosswise rises up from the lake and stands on the surface]

Reel me under that starry light.
Just like a fisherman's daughter.

[Cut to lake during the day]

Baby when the bands and the barkers go home,
They say that Venus she rises out of the foam.

[Urd laughs and stands up out of the water]

She dances on air and laughs at the moon,
And watches young lovers on fiery dunes,

[She watches Keichii and Belldandy on the shore, while Ryouko and Ayeka fight
over Tenchi]

So are you willing to wait
For the miracle?

[Belldandy hangs in the air, emitting light, crossfade to Ayeka watching Ryo-
Oh emit light]

Are you willing to wait it throught?
Are you willing to wait for the miracle?
Oh, don't you believe they're true?

There's an old man sitting by the side of the pier.

[Yosho sits by the lakeshore at night]

He's got his cross and his camera and his bottle of beer.
He sits all day and all through the night
Praying for a vision of the heavenly light,

[Flash from across the lake obscures our view. Flares up in to an Eva angel's
death-flare cross]

'Cause he's willing to wait
For the miracle.
Willing to wait it through.

[Fade to shot of a desert with a heat-haze, panning over a huge, smooth plain
of glass in the centre. Overlay shot of Chris Wiseman bowing his head and
shutting his eyes in resignation. A glint of light off the glass blinds the
viewer and switches scene]

Oh yeah, he's willing to wait for the miracle.
What else is he gonna do?

[Crosswise faces off against Yosho, who becomes Sephiroth]

What else is he gonna do?

[Many fight scenes, Ryouko vs. Kagato, Crosswise vs. Vaeden, Cloud vs.
Sephiroth, Tenchi vs. Kain, Urd vs. Marla]

Me, I don't need no heavenly sign
'Cause I got the water and the wine.

[Crosswise prays alone at the lakeshore]

Baby please let your love-light shine
'Cause we all gotta meet our maker sometime.

[Zoom in on Crosswise's eyes. He opens them at looks at the camera, revealing
them to be blank, flaring with white energy]

That's why I'm willing to wait
For the miracles.
Willing to wait it through.
That's why I'm willing to wait for the miracles.
But I just can't wait for you.

[Crosswise holds out a hand to Katherine, whose ghostly image floats above the
water]

Let's go down to the sound tonight,
Walk on water.

[Crosswise walks out on to the lake, following the ghost]

Walk on water.

[The other characters follow him over the lake in pairs]

Walk on water.

* * *

It was a fairly normal day at the temple. Skuld was tinkering with one of her
Banpei prototypes, Urd was in her 'castle' mixing her potions, and dear
Keichii was buried in his books, revising for a test. The sun was shining, the
birds were singing cheefully.

So why did she feel uneasy?

Who can fathom the mind of a goddess, if not another of her kind? And even her
own sisters Urd and Skuld found Belldandy an enigma on occaision. Therefore,
gentle reader, it is perhaps best if we brush over some of the more complex
processes, and skip to the human-interpretable side of it all.

Actually, you'd probably be surprised by how human Belldandy is. Probably a
lot more so than many an immortal. But I'm digressing here.

Belldandy was basically using her link to the Yggdrasil, the world-tree, to
search for the source of whatever it was that was disturbing her. Or at least
she was trying to. She could feel her request going out to that greatest of
computers, but there was no reply. Seriously bothered (because it's not
everyday that the tree that runs existance vanishes) now she tried again. No
answer. And again. I'm sure you're seeing a pattern here.

It was at this point that Belldandy enlisted the help of her sisters. First
Urd, then Skuld, tried to phone home. Both of them found themselves in the
same situation as Belldandy. Surprising, huh? The first Keichii knew of it was
when he heard Skuld's worried cry through in the lounge. Did I mention he's
nearly always the last to know?

* * *

Now, if Belldandy had known about Washuu, she'd have gotten somewhere _sooo_
much quicker. She could have asked the self-proclaimed universe's greatest
genius to look in to it. Alone, on the other hand, it's going to be days
before Washuu even bothers to look in to the matter. She will look in to a
connected issue in a couple of minutes, though.

While we're waiting for Mihoshi to make Washuu trip over the right wire, I'll
just explain that the reason Belldandy doesn't know about Washuu is because
Washuu doesn't want her to know. I'm sure you're all aware of the various
hints
at Washuu's former deity-status. She's been keeping out of Kamisama's way for
a while now. She think's she's perfect at it. She's almost right. The thing
is,
there's very little getting around omniscience and omnipresence in
combination. Ah, there we go.

"Mihoshi! Don't touch that-ARRRGH!!"

"Ara... I'm sorry Washuu-chan! Here, let me help you up!"

"Stay outta my way you klutz!" Washuu somehow struggled out the tangle of
wires that Mihoshi had managed to create by lifting _one_ wire to get to her.

To this day, even _I'm_ at a loss to explain Mihoshi. Natural disaster just
doesn't cut it.

It was then that Washuu saw the little flashing light on the console in front
of her. "What the- why didn't the alarm on this thing go off?!"

I figure it'll take her about four seconds-

"MIHOSHI!"

Yep, there we go. The kawaii catastrophe managed to knock it during one of
Washuu's time experiments, meaning that whilst it only got knocked a month
ago, it's effectively been non-functional for over four billion years. Now
isn't that impressive? Washuu never checked it because it was supposed to yell
at _her_...

"I'm sorry! I didn't mean to- ara... what _did_ I do now?"

"......" Washuu shook herself. "Never mind! Just get out of my lab! And DON'T
TOUCH _ANYTHING_!!!!!!!"

"Okay! There's no need to shout...."

Washuu didn't take her eyes off Mihoshi until the girl was well out the door.
Then she turned back to the reality scanner. There it was, evidence of a
disturbance that should have caused _serious_ damage to this reality.
Originating 4.3 billion years ago.

4.3 billion years ago? The impact of the meteor that split off the moon from
the main mass of the earth? What on earth was that all about? Still the
disturbance seemed to have calmed down-

No.

Disturbances that big never calmed down on their own. Somebody had come along
and made it calm down. But there had been side-effects. The meteor strike that
had created the moon had been one of them. Another side-effect had apparently
occured in a desert on the equator, one of of those small ones in sub-Saharan
Africa with no real name to speak of.

Washuu was annoyed that she'd missed the reason for the moon's creation
because of a faulty wire. She was going to be even more sorry that she didn't
fix it until after she'd checked out the desert. It was because of that she
missed not only the Norns' interest in the same area, but a couple of other
things happening on a transuniversal scale.

But let's face it, it's always more fun when she misses things. She doesn't do
it very often, so let's revel in in it while we can. When she spots the last
one, she's not going to make any more for _ages_.

*Now*, thought she, *How to sucker Tenchi in to checking this out for me.*

It'll take her all of five seconds. She _is_ a genius after all.

Why use Tenchi? She's busy! She's got a whole new invention to test!

Don't ask. You wouldn't understand. And believe me, you don't want to know
either.

* * *

You're probably wondering why on earth the Norns turned their attentions away
from a distinct lack of Yggdrasil communication and towards that insignificant
little piece of desert in Zaire.

Okay, I admit they have a distinct advantage over Washuu here. They know about
the Great Circle there. They don't know what it was used for, but they guessed
millenia ago why it was placed on that spot.

Oh, please. We can go in to the technicalities of magical theory another time.
Let's cut to the chase, shall we?

You see, they finally recieved a message from Yggdrasil. About lunchtime.

Belldandy, Urd and Skuld were all sitting in a circle on a ward they'd
inscribed, light playing around them in a special effect that most movie
directors would have killed for. Keichii was keeping one eye on them, and one
on the front door in case anyone turned up with the inconvienient timing which
they never seem to have around the goddesses when it _really_ counts. You'd
think an intelligent kid like him would have noticed by now.

At last, the light faded. Belldandy and Skuld looked worried; Urd looked
annoyed.

"All data traffic out of Heaven closed due to network interference? What kind
of excuse is that?"

"One that we shall have to accept. And we shall have to go to the source of
the disturbance if we are to deal with the problem." Belldandy was quiet, but
firm.

"What's going on, Bell?"

"Something on Earth is interfering with the workings of Yggdrasil. As the only
goddesses available here, we must deal with the source of the trouble. In
Africa."

"Africa? How are we going to get there?"

"We'll teleport. Perhaps you should stay here."

"Yeah. It's not like you could help out or anything." Urd was being a bit
contemptuous, and it earned her a look from Belldandy, while Skuld seized on
the opportunity.

"Oneesama, Keichi'll just get in the way! Let's leave him here! Please!"

Keichi sighed. "Look if it'll be any trouble..." he wanted to go along to make
sure Belldandy was okay, but still...

"No. No trouble at all Keichi." Belldandy's voice brooked no argument.

So, our two groups head for the circle, with Ryo-Ohki having several hours'
head start on the Norns, the two groups will arrive at about the same time.
Convienient, ne?

Of course, they'll both be too late. Isn't it always the way?

* * *

His mouth felt like parchment. He felt like he was baking clay.

His first three attempts at getting up failed. His whole body seemed made of
lead. It took him half an hour to take his first step, and then he just fell
over again. Nevertheless, determination, beyond that of any normal mortal,
prevailed. He managed to begin walking, if in stiff-legged manner more
reminiscent of a doll than a man. If he could concentrate on more than
walking, he'd notice the trail of dirt he leaves with each footstep. It's only
slight, but it's there.

It took him three hours to make it to the edge of the circle. By then, a human
should have been dead long ago, baked by the blazing sun. Some hindward part
of his battered mind informed him of this, but he was busy celebrating the
fact that  limbs moved more freely. But he felt weaker than ever. And he still
had nothing to wear.

It's a good thing he hasn't glanced at his reflection. His whole body is
shimmering in the heat, like it's evaporating. Truth is, he's running out of
time. If somebody doesn't find him soon, he'll be dead and gone. There'll be
no trace at all.

Still that indomitable will sustains him, and he staggers up the dune and out-

-the air shimmers horribly, and for moment he feels disorientation-

-over the top and in to the desert. Glancing over his shoulder, he sees only
desert. Staring in disbelief, he looks harder. _Then_ he sees. His vision
shimmers and sees the desert, lying over the glass plain like a blanket. He is
intrigued, but weariness washes over him like a wave. He shimmers and flickers
even more, staggering. Turning his face away, he begins to walk, hoping to
find civilisation out there.

Behind him, Ryo-Ohki flies silently towards the great circle. The Norns will
teleport in in about an hour, just as she arrives. By then he'll be quite some
way away.

If he isn't already dead.

* * *

[End Episode One]

Author's notes: Well, you should be guessing by now. The important thing is,
are you guessing about the right things? Or was it so bad that you're not even
bothering to guess? Let me know! Or Barney shall visit you in the small
hours!!!

Good hunting, and may the pack be with you.

Honour to the pack,
Hunter.