El Hazard is distributed by Pioneer. They gots da rights, I don't,
ya dig? I be no makin' no money here, so take dat any way ya want,
too.

I dunno, you want a title? What say (just for now), we call this one:



				Too Much and Never Enough



    Time, like an helix of semi-precious stones. Like the one on her
wrist, the bracelet Makoto bought for her. Ifurita closed her hand, and
brought her arm back in. It was dark. It was night. It was quiet.
Makoto was sleeping to her left, as she continued to stare unthinking
at and through the ceiling. 
    Time was the enemy, Ifurita realised. That, and its ally, the
Second Law of Thermodynamics. The only enemies she could not defeat.
The only enemies that mattered. Time brought her and Makoto together,
only so it could break them apart and make her wait ten thousand years
in an imperfect stasis to meet him to send him away so that she could
meet him and leave him so that she could wait ten thousand years to
meet him and then... this line of thought was worse than useless. 
    The problem with time, was that there was never just enough of it.
Always too much time, or not enough of it. Too much time since she was
sealed away in El Hazard-- age had weakened her somewhat. Too much time
on Earth-- the years sapped had sapped her strength further. 
    Too little time with Makoto, before she had to send him away to El
Hazard; too little time with Makoto there, before he freed her from the
staff. Too little time now, together.
    Makoto, Makoto, do you know what will happen? Do you know who will
die first? Will it be Ifurita, with her waning powers and the
relentless push of entropy? Will she suffer a final systems failure
before you die? What will you do then, Makoto, Makoto? Or maybe it will
be you who will go first-- Ifurita has survived this long, after all,
and the lifespan of humans are very brief compared to that time. She
was built to last, don't you know.
    What then? She could easily outlast Makoto by centuries,
potentially. Could she go on? Would she want to? The emptiness from
before she met Makoto would return, she could feel it tug even now as
she contemplated what would happen if she survived him-- and this time
it would be worse, because now she knew what would be missing.
    For all her arsenal, for all her power and ability, Ifurita could
not win the war against time. She could go through it, temporarily gain
a small foothold, but in the end time, and its soldiers entropy and
paradox would win. It was inevitable.
    Always either too much time, or never enough.


Author's notes: Ifurita just don't get a break, do she? Partially an
idea I've had for a long, long time-- that Ifurita's lifespan might be
near an end as her systems wear out --originally it was to be the basis
of a crossover with Tenchi Muyo, but I never wrote it and probably
never will. The rest? from various sources and perhaps minor
inspirations (the opening sentence, for instance, is the title of a
short story by an author whose name currently escapes me. I'm pretty
sure I have the story around somewhere-- I think the actual title was,
"Time, Like a Semi-Precious Helix of Stones...").
    I must admit to having been influenced by Emily Saizon's Nemurenai,
(and I still say she's writes the best El Hazard fics out there, even,
as loathe as I am to admit it, more than myself-- and that pains me greatly)
which deals with similar subject matter, albeit in a better form I
should say. It was at the same time why I almost didn't write this, and
probably one of the reasons I ended up writing it.  Because of Emily's
story-- it said everything well enough that there was nothing left to
add. To me, her story defined the subject-- there really is no other
viable option to portray it, and yet I don't want to be accused of
doing the same thing. And then I realised that there was another side
to the coin: Ifurita might not be the first to die. Even with her
systems waning, it might take a long time before she finally dies.

Matthew Lewis is:
	Matt on IRC
	Sojiro_Seta on Kawaiimuck
	maybeso@ican.net
	a proud member of Lump Pot Productions
	experimenting with a webpage at:
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Flats/9345/index.html
__________________________________________________

My mind is like a vacuum-- nature abhors it.
__________________________________________________