Disclaimer: No money is being made from this and no such intent should be 
inferred. All original elements are mine. 
Inspirational credit goes to Alexandre Dumas, David Weber, David Eddings, 
George Lucas, and Spider Robinson plus many other too numerous to list here.

I'm experimenting a bit. Enjoy.

C&C, public or private is welcome. I respond to all C&C....eventually

************************

The Past...

"Can't you do something? Anything?" Tears flowed freely. 

"Yes, but he asked me not to." A hand on the shoulder, comfort. "He's old, 
Ryoko, its time for him to go."

"Ryoookoo..." Several coughs and gasps for air.

"Yes?"

"There is something I want you to do for me..,"

"Yes? Anything!"

"Guard them. Protect them as you have me. Protect...the symbols. She will 
return--The sword and the stone!" A hand, skin translucent with age, a 
clawlike grip around an arm that could shatter battle steel with one blow. 
"The bloodline! Promise me you will guard them!"

"I swear it."

"Then, I am at peace." The hand stretched out, towards something only its 
owner could see. "Uuuusaaaagiiii..."

Then there was only silence, and the sound of weeping.

*****************
The present...

Ever since that damn Jusenkyoin had smacked him with that damn virus,
 Saotome had spent half his life as a woman and as he did now whenever he 
thought about them, took a moment to curse the entire genomancers guild.

Still, he was something of a positive thinker. Yes, it was disorienting
to change gender when hit with water, but it also meant could finally achieve
his dream, and like his mother before him, join the Knights Of the Senshi, 
the royal family's personal bodyguard.

But first, he had business to take care of and he shoved the left control rod 
forward, increasing the horse's speed, the ruins growing ever closer. This 
really was a good horse, he decided as he steered it over the stone blocked 
road with his palm on the right rod, the single wheel humming as it passed 
over the cracks. Gentle pressure was all he needed to steer and Saotome 
decided that when he returned to Tokyo, he would buy the horse. This was far 
too good a piece of machinery to stay a rental.

The sunlight suddenly dimmed and Saotome made a face as he reevaluated the 
light conditions. Overhead, he could see the green and whites of Midway, one 
of Japan's several moons as it passed between Japan and the sun. That meant 
that he would be fighting the first duel in the dim twilight. Still, his 
female form, which he was currently in, had better night vision.

'Man,' he thought to himself, 'how the hell did I wind up haven three duels
in one day?'

Twisting the lever, he parked the horse by the tree and stared at the young
lady standing by the wall, chewing on a blade of grass. Her bright red hair
was tied back from her face in a long pigtail and she wore a long red cloak. 
She looked much like his female self, but smaller and more slender.

"Your manners need more refinement," she said, giving him a cute smile as she
stepped away from the wall. "Our business was to commence five minutes ago."

"Is dying that important to you?" Saotome asked as he heard the howl of two
more horses as they approached. The rounded the corner and stopped and
Saotome felt his heart sink as he recognized his other two appointments.

One of them was tall, with spiky cyan hair and wore a dark blue cloak. The
other appeared to be male at first glance, and it was only by the planes of
her face that you realized that he was a she. She wore a dark purple cloak 
and her pink hair spilled down her back in straight waves.

"Shidou, you can't fight her," said the cyan haired woman. "I'm dueling her
in an hour."

"I'm fighting her as well," said the third woman. "We were to meet at the
meadow in two hours."

Shidou started chuckling as she began to remove her cloak, the other two
climbing out of their horses and doing the same. "Well, it seems you have a
busy afternoon ahead of you," she said to Saotome. "Let's get on with it
then." Her cloak hit the ground and Saotome stared at the tunic.

"You're one of the Senshi?" he asked Shidou. The cloaks of Shidou's
friends also hit the ground, revealing that they wore identical tunics.
"You're all Senshi? I've been looking all over Japan for you."

"And now you've found us," Shidou said. "I believe we have a matter of
manners to discuss, unless you'd like to reschedule."

Saotome sighed and removed from his belt Nerima, the blade handed down
through the generations of his mother's family. A single thought, and the
blade flickered to life, an energy beam a meter long, ten centimeters wide,
and an edge of one molecule. "No," he said. "I do not reschedule matters of
honor. But I will take no pleasure in this victory." He slipped into a
guarding stance as Shidou produced a blade of her own seemingly out of thin
air. "I'll be with you ladies in a moment."

"Ooh," the cyan haired one said, "she's a feisty one." The other redhead
nodded agreement.

At that point, there was the sound of multiple horses approaching and
Shidou's expression became one of disgust. "She wouldn't, not twice in one
day."

Around the corner of the ruins came five men and women in the tunics of the
Church's soldiers. "You'll all under arrest," said a woman with the epaulets
and silver braid of a captain. "Will you come peacefully, or resist arrest?"

"She would," the other two gaurdswomen said in unison.

"I'll ask again," said the captain levelly. "Will you come peacefully or will
you resist arrest?"

"What are you, stupid?" demanded the cyan haired gaurdswoman. "Of course
we're going to resist. Just give us a moment." The three gaurdswoman went
into a huddle. Saotome tried to join them, but was shoved away.

"Five against three," said the cyan haired woman. "Hardly seems fair. Should
we offer them a chance to surrender?"

"There's four of us," Saotome said.

"This isn't your fight," Shidou snarled. "This is between us and High Priest
Kagato. You're not one of us."

"I may not wear a Senshi's tunic," Saotome shot back, "but I believe that I 
have
the heart, like my mother before me."

"A warrior and a poet," observed the second redhead.

"You got a name?" Shidou demanded.

"Saotome."

Shidou exchanged looks with her comrades. "Shidou," she said and indicated
the others. "Ryoko and Utena." Saotome shook everyone's hand.

"So that's it?" asked Ryoko. "Everyone aquatinted?" They spun to face the
Church soldiers, Ryoko's energy blade manifesting in her hand and Utena took
hers from her belt. "Okay," Ryoko said with a smile. "We're ready to resist."

The soldiers clambered out of their horses and drew their own swords, 
shouting a battle cry as they rushed forwards. For a moment, there was a 
flurry of swords as everyone jockeyed for position and then they all flowed 
in different directions.

Though he was at a loss to explain how, he had been going for one of the 
lower ranks, Saotome wound up with the captain, who proved to be well skilled 
with her sword. Put on the defensive, Saotome could only retreat, fending off 
her snakelike blows as he searched for an opening, any opening to use for his 
offense.


Shidou cleaned off her blade and stared disgustedly at the man in the dirt 
before her. "Amateur," she growled as Ryoko and Utena joined her.

"So much for being strengthened by Serenity's will, huh?" Utena joked and 
Ryoko shot them both a look.

"Serenity was a good person," Ryoko said quietly, "not even the Lady of Fire 
could dislike her for long."


Saotome stared as Nerima's hilt bounced from the top of the wall, and fell to 
the ground far below. 'Far enough to kill someone,' part of him 
dispassionately noted and he looked back at the captain, and smiled as he 
moved into a guarding stance. After all, swords were only an extension of the 
body, which was the true weapon.


"Look," Utena said quietly, causing the other two to look up from their 
looting of the soldiers. That was to say that Shidou was looting, and Ryoko 
was watching. "She's still alive." She pointed at the high wall at the South 
end of the ruins. At the top, they could see two figures, and only one of 
them had a sword. The other was dodging the orange blade as it swept through 
the air.

"Unarmed combat against a blade?" Ryoko asked. "Is she nuts?"

"Its only bad if they get you," Utena replied.

"Utena's got a point," Shidou said as she knelt and ripped the platinum braid 
from the body of the soldier at her feet. "Unless they make contact, a 
sword's just a nifty light beam." She scowled at the soldier's purse. "Only 
fifty banum?" She kicked the body. "How the hell are we supposed to stick it 
to Kagato if the church pays its dopes crap?"

"We got paid in standard creds," Utena said. "Banum's only good if you're 
passing bribes around."

Shidou's eyes lit up and she started digging through the fallen soldier's 
tunic more enthusiastically,


When one is armed and their opponent is not, one generally believes that the 
advantage is theirs. This belief had made the captain overconfident and 
provided Saotome with the opening he had been looking for. As she lunged, he 
twisted and leaned to the left, and then lashed out with his foot, catching 
the captain in the stomach and then again in the face. She hit the ground, a 
data link flying out of her tunic and then rolled over as her body curled up 
into a ball, which caused her to fall off the wall. Scooping up the link, 
Saotome made his way back down the wall to retrieve Nerima.

By the time he got back to the horses, Ryoko and Shidou were leaning against 
one of the walls, watching Utena pile the bodies of the soldiers.

"What's Utena doing?" Saotome asked.

"Revenge," Shidou replied. "She likes to get creative with Kagato's lackeys." 
Saotome turned away as Utena took out a knife and began to hack at the 
bodies.

"But why?"

"She used to be one of the Church Soldiers," Ryoko shrugged. "Then something 
happened involving someone called the Rose Bride. She won't talk about it 
much." She looked at the data link. "That her data link? The soldier you 
fought?"

"It fell out of her tunic."

Ryoko plucked it from Saotome's hand and studied it. "Its a storage unit, no 
transmitting capability."

"No access panel either," Shidou noted. "Looks like one of their secure 
memory modules."

"Shit," Ryoko said, staring down the road. "Horses."

"I don't see anything," Saotome said.

"Ryoko's got better hearing then we do," Shidou said and then raised her 
voice. "Utena! Company!" Utena gave no outward sign that she had heard them, 
but she did make one last swipe before rising to her feet.

"What about Saotome?" Shidou asked as the Senshi gathered their cloaks.

Ryoko's golden eyes were unreadable as she studied Saotome. "She's brash, 
hotheaded and entirely too bold. We leave her here and she's liable to do 
something stupid like challenge those soldiers just to buy us more time. 
Quite frankly, I'm in no mood to sneak back into Tokyo to rescue her. She 
comes with us."

Saotome bowed his head in thanks and headed straight for his horse.

****
As they moved north, the terrain turned rocky and the road bad, and the 
quartet was forced to slow down to a snail's pace or risk crashing. They 
stopped only late at night and moved out at dawn. They had taken the news of 
his gender changing ability with minimal concern, but Saotome couldn't help 
feeling like they knew something he didn't and often caught them looking at 
him oddly, speculatively, almost.

But he welcomed it. While maybe not a Senshi yet, he had found them, and for 
that, he was thankful, if a bit troubled. For as long as he could remember, 
Nodaka Saotome had regaled her son with tales of the Senshi, painting them as 
unflawed guardians of love, justice, and peace. Saotome could still hear her 
ringing tones as she told him tales of heroism and sacrifice. Of the Lady of 
Heart, one of the original nine Senshi (when there had been only nine) who 
sacrificed her only shot at love for Queen Serenity's safety. His father, 
however, had spoken of them as human beings, with all the good and bad that 
came with it.

If the trio he had fallen in with was any indication however, then Emperor 
Tenchi and Empress Serenity had entrusted their safety to borderline 
psychopaths and Shidou seemed to be the worst of the lot. She fought the few 
bandit ambushes the encountered with a zeal that seemed almost suicidal, was 
perhaps a bit to fond of ale, and companionship with people who made a living 
out that sort of thing did not overly offend her sensibilities. She was 
occasionally careless about the truth, and indifferent about the rights of 
the dead when it came to property ownership...or the rights of some of the 
living for that matter.

Utena was totally opposite from Shidou. The tall, slender woman spoke only 
when she had something to say and the only time her eyes lit up was when they 
had to fend off church soldiers...whose bodies Shidou looted as well.

It was Ryoko who drew his attention though. Unlike the others, she seemed to 
have no particular beef with the Church, and yet was indifferent to her 
companions bloodthirsty excesses even though she scowled if a joke was made 
about the tenets of the Church itself. She was also the one who knew where 
they were going, taking them down backroads and main roads as though 
following something.

It was on one cold and clear morning as they traveled a narrow road along a 
mountain face, that suddenly the sun seemed to wink out, Saotome looked up 
just in time to see what almost looked like some kind of hand descend upon 
them.

The next thing he knew, he was standing in a chamber fashioned out of some 
kind of metal. The floor lurched and there was a strained sound, as though 
some aged voice was calling out "Miya!".

Saotome somehow managed to perch on Shidou's head as the scream of sheer 
terror bellowed forth from his lips. "CAAAAAAAT!"

"What the hell?" Shidou demanded, shoving Saotome to the floor.

"Family thing," Ryoko said. "All Saotome men are scared witless of anything 
feline or close to it." Saotome pressed himself against the wall, eyes 
darting back and forth. "Been that way for a couple of millennia. I'll talk 
to him as soon as we hit orbit."

Once it was explained that the ship only made those noises because its 
builder thought it was cute and there were in fact no felines on board, 
Saotome calmed down. Though whenever the ship, which he soon learned was 
called the Ryo-Oki, made a noise, he jumped. 

The Ryo-Oki was an old ship, but fast, and they were soon in the system's 
outer reaches, out among the asteroids. Ryoko, who sat in the room's only 
chair, a hand on each of the crystal spheres that seemed to be the controls, 
slowed the ship, apparently searching for something. Finally, they dipped 
inside one of the great rocks and after maneuvering through a crevice, came 
to a large cavern. Clinging to one of the walls by means of a bottom mounted 
grasping claw was a medium size freighter. It was disc shaped and obviously 
very old. It appeared to be a single deck and the cockpit was mounted on the 
side, rather then center on in the front.

"That's a Republic ship, isn't it?" Saotome asked.

"Sort of," Ryoko replied as they slowed. "She was built during the fifty 
years between the First and Second Republic, when the Empire was decorating 
systems with the hulls of Alliance ships. After the second Republic was 
founded, this design became popular with independent haulers because of the 
increased cargo capacity and low operating costs." Saotome blinked and found 
himself standing in an empty cargo bay. At his feet was a small brown 
creature with thin brownish-gray fur. The creature looked up at him with dim 
yellow eyes and made a pitiful squeaking noise. The air in the room was stale 
and smelled bad. Thin, and barely breathable. Saotome tried not to breathe 
too deep.

"I'll put Ryo-Oki in her chamber," Utena said, scooping the creature up.

"Fine. Saotome, come with us." Ryoko and Shidou led Saotome through a 
corridor to a small conical cockpit. before him was two seats set into the 
floor before a console. To his right, another console set into the wall, and 
an ordinary chair at some kind of desk. "Flip every switch on that console 
with a red light," Ryoko said to him as she dropped the module on the desk 
and took the left seat at the front. Saotome did as instructed as Shidou 
squeezed past him and took the right hand seat.

"Seven percent systems failure," Shidou said. "Not bad considering its been 
here for what? Ten years?" Her fingers danced across keys, and Saotome could 
hear the hum-whirr of stasis fields spinning down. The air began to freshen 
as the scrubbers started working and the deckplates started vibrating as the 
engines came online. Curiously, he picked up the module and his own data link 
and started fiddling. The cipher was a number pattern and Saotome started 
working at it, picking it apart. Patterns were kin to rhythm and rhythm, as 
his Father often said, was key to balance in the Art.

"Closer to twelve," Ryoko said absently as she manipulated the controls, 
detaching the ship from the wall and guiding it out of the cave. "Anything 
vital?"

"Nah, at least nothing the auto-repair can't handle. So where are we headed?"

"Dunno. Its a pretty safe bet Kagato knows we're in Japan, so we need to get 
out of this system. Any suggestions?"

"Jump Gate then hyperdrive," Utena said as she entered the cockpit and sat at 
the third console.

"No. He's going to be watching the jump grid." Ryoko said and reached for the 
console set between the two front seats just below the hyperdrive controls, 
slouching a little to see the screen. "I'd rather just hyper out of here." 
Long fingers tapped keys. "Some out of the way system where Kagato doesn't 
have a reach." She muttered a curse to herself. "Or at least where the Church 
has other things on its mind--Shidou, you owe me fifty."

"Huh?"

Ryoko jabbed a finger at the screen. "Manticore and Haven are at war. Again." 
The cyan haired woman resumed tapping keys, stopping only to take a cred chip 
from Shidou.

"What the hell?" Saotome burst out and the other three turned to look at him. 
"I'm in," he said, holding up the link and module.

"Gimme that," Ryoko said, getting out of her seat. "Son of a bitch."

"What?"

"Remember how the soldiers seemed stirred up about something? Apparently 
Kagoto's stumbled across leads for something named 'Helios'. Helios...sounds 
familiar."

"Any details?"

"No, just that they're to wait for an info download from an Agent Eagle." 
Shidou's face became stormy. "Easy, Shidou, Eagle could be anyone. Its not 
necessarily him." Shidou's reply was in a soft, musical language, but her 
tone suggested the words she uttered were anything but. "Yeah, I agree, but 
if Kagato is this worked up about something to put all soldiers on alert, 
then we need to know more." She handed the link and module to Utena and 
resumed her seat.

"Hey wait," Shidou said after Ryoko paged through a few more entries. "Go 
back. No. One more. There. Nabiki."

"Nabiki system?" Saotome asked.

"Nabiki's not a system," Shidou said. "She's a woman."

"More like a cult," Ryoko groused, even as she called up system coords on the 
navigational controls. "Whatever you need, a Nabiki can get her hands on it, 
and they have no particular love for the Church."

"So we can trust them?" Saotome asked.

"Only as long as our money holds out." Ryoko said and outside the cockpit, 
space became the molted sky of hyperspace. 
*************
Steve "Komodo" T.
Get inside my head (but bring a flashlight)
http://www.livejournal.com/users/pandoras_closet



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