I released a sketchy version of this fic about a year and a half ago. 
I've since changed the concept around a lot and rewritten this first
chapter fairly heavily.  I actually have a working webpage up right now,
if you're interested.

http://home.comcast.net/~fireangel37/index.htm

or specificly for this story:

http://home.comcast.net/~fireangel37/trea.html

Comments and criticism welcome.  I'm starting to think that no one on
this list bothers to read my stuff anymore.  Chapter 2 follows.

The Rebound Effect: Again!
Chapter 1:  Tsunami

Disclaimer:  Characters and setting are the property Ken Akamatsu and
others.

Author's notes at the end of the chapter.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

The icy expanse of space slid silently past the hull of the military
frigate, though the majority of her passengers could care less about the
goings on outside the vessel.  The ship's crew was comprised of hardened
spacers and generally had more important things to do than watch the
vacuum go past.  Those passengers that were not veteran spacefarers had
already grown bored with looking out the chilled portholes at the slowly
changing expanse of nothingness.  Even at the speeds which the ship
traveled, it took days for even the closest stellar body to shift to any
degree detectable with the naked eye.

The passengers were a mixed lot, the majority of them being soldiers
moving from post to post while the rest were a cross section of the
social strata.  Closer to Sol, civilians would likely have been aboard a
passenger liner or a transport of some kind, but this wasn't close to
Sol, not by a long shot.  Out here in the depths of space, anyone who
didn't own their own ship took a slip where they could find it.  The
Imperial Navy wasn't above taking on passengers for a nominal fee and
acceptance of the fact that there was a very real chance of getting
fired upon before reaching their destination, so many folk found
themselves bunking down between ration crates at one point or another.
Of course, the dangers on a military frigate were no worse than faced on
more private vessels, they were simply different.

One of those passengers had taken up a position in a darkened corner of
what served as the passengers' meal hall.  Passengers and crew did not
officially mix, though they came closer to doing so inside the confines
of the meal hall than any other area.  Here, a crude form of alcohol was
sold along with the slightly substandard rations which were the best
passengers generally could hope for.  Alcohol, however, served to
equalize the different social tiers within the ship, and virtually
everyone aboard could be seen in the meal hall eventually.  Given the
large load of personnel and passengers, that made the meal hall a busy
place.

The figure in the corner took a long, slow sip of his beverage, some of
the aforementioned alcohol, and sighed.  Had he been in better light,
his purely Asian features would have been obvious as well as his slight
build, far smaller than any of the soldiers and almost all of the
passengers, as well.  One of his hands rested innocently against his hip
where a worn pattern in the material of his belt showed that a holster
of some type normally rested.  Passengers were not, of course, allowed
to carry weapons aboard ship.  Other blank spaces on his belt indicated
more items which had either been relinquished to the soldiery or hidden
so as not to attract the avarice of other passengers or even crew
members.  It was not unknown for a traveler to find himself beaten and
robbed or worse as part of the passage from star to star.

Sighing again and taking another drink, the passenger settled back into
the shadows, his eyes slowly but methodically watching the other people
in the meal hall.  When one of those figures appeared before him, all
his vigilance served to do, however, was make the appearance all the
more surprising.  In a maneuver half born of reflex and half of
clumsiness, he found himself falling backwards from the chair.  His
flailing arms managed to maintain his balance just long enough for the
other figure to seize the front of his tunic and pull him forward again,
forcing the chair's legs to the floor.

"You should be more careful," the newcomer said, her lilting voice
pronouncing the garbled Indo-Chinese of Imperial Basic in a clearly
feminine manner, though the baggy dark clothing and tied back hair could
have hid either gender in the dim light.  "I do not believe you have
changed at all since last we saw each other."

The original lurker laughed nervously.  "I..." he started, but seemed to
give up on whatever he was thinking about saying.  "I've been looking
for you for quite a while.  I knew you were in the sector... but I had
only hoped you would be aboard this ship."  He took another drink of the
caustic liquor, seeming to take some courage from the fluid.  "I wish
you would come back with me.  Things are growing more dangerous in the
galaxy, especially for our kind.  The children..." he trailed off as he
realized that the female was staring at him intently.  "What?"

"You did not chase me out to the edges of known space just because a few
witch hunters have gained in power," she said very matter-of-factly.
Her eyes scanned his face, seeming not to notice the relative darkness
of their corner.  "You have changed so much since we first met.  Am I so
changed as well?"  It was the woman's turn to sigh.  "How many years has
it been since that day?  I no longer count..."

"Six hundred, seventy four years and six months, give or take a few
months.  Calendars are not so reliable in space, particularly with
recent... events."  He shrugged. Keeping track of the years had
apparently been one of his few vices and the apparent lapses were a bit
of an embarrassment.  "Fifteen years since your last departure from
home," he added levelly, though it was clear from the tone of his voice
that the passage of time had cost him an emotional price.

"So long...  I..." she sighed, the calm confidence of her voice wavering
a little.  Her eyes no longer met his face, though she did address his
accusation in her own way.  "How are the children?"

"Tamago is married now, though I thought he would end up a spinster.  He
is almost fifty.  And our first great-great grandchild should be turning
twelve any day now."  The oddity of the situation made him laugh, though
a slight tinge of nervousness still crept into his voice.

"Are they... pure?" she asked, the odd way in which she twisted the word
'pure' made it seem more an epithet than an adjective.

"As far as I've been able to tell, yes," he said, his own lips turning
in distaste.  "They will be safe from the Inquisitors, if they come.  We
have not passed on our legacy, it seems, though I fear that one day the
genes may reappear and they will face danger."

"There are so few of us left now.  We might be the last..."  Her voice
sounded melancholy, almost wistful at the prospect.  "If only we could
rest as well.  Sometimes, I think that death has left me waiting for too
long."

The woman may have been smiling a grim smile in the darkness, though in
the dim light there was little the man could make out.  He pressed on,
"Look, I know how you feel about everything.  We shouldn't be here.  It
should be one of them.  They shouldn't be dead or we should be or
something else entirely.  We didn't know.  We couldn't have known," his
voice wavered, indicating that this was a topic that he was struggling
with as well.

"If only I had been... stronger," she said, softly and almost timidly,
"I should have known."

"That's not true.  You couldn't have known what was going to happen..."
he took a deep breath.  "They are avenged.  There is nothing more we can
do.  Please, just... come home with me.  Let's forget about them for a
little while."  The suggestion hung heavily in the air between them.  "I
don't mean forever, it's just that...  I love you.  Nothing is going to
bring them back, but we can be together for a while, if nothing else."

The female turned from him as though to hide her face.  "I... love you,
as well, but I don't think that I can-"

Suddenly, the ship lurched violently and the lights went out for an
instant as the gravity failed.  Warning klaxons sounded as the pair were
thrown violently from their seats and rebounded off of a bulkhead. They
clung together as they impacted and rotated.  Everywhere around them,
people were screaming and drifting out of control in zero-g.  Soldiers
scrambled to their stations in the null gravity, and passengers did
their best to avoid floating freely. The ship shuddered violently again
and the floating pair slammed hard into what had been the floor, with
the female on the bottom.

"I... love you..." the male figure gasped out as the taste of his own
blood welled up in his mouth.  The female form did not stir.

And then a third violent shiver struck the ship and everything went
black.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Urashima Keitaro gripped the bus transfer in one hand and gulped.  He
hadn't seen his grandmother in years, but with his parents kicking him
out of the house, she was his only hope.  Sighing deeply, his mind raced
over what had gone wrong at the last entrance exam for Toudai but he cut
it short.  "No, that was last year.  This year I will make it in for
certain."

During his walk through the last few blocks, to the long and winding
staircase of the inn, he ran over what he was going to say to his
grandmother a few times.  The promise he had made 15 years ago still
gave him strength, but it was all he could do to keep desperation out of
his thoughts.  This was truly his last chance of attending Toudai and
avoiding his "destiny" as the successor to the family bakery.  With the
way the economy had been flagging, he did not think that a part time job
would be able to support him well enough for him to study properly.
Second year ronin or not, this time he would succeed.

At the top of the steps, the sprawling complex of the Hinata Inn was
revealed.  The building looked to be in failing repair, though not
abandoned which caused Keitaro's hope to swell slightly.  A lack of
visitors would mean extra rooms, which might be all he needed to
convince his grandmother to let him stay.  However, as he entered he was
surprised to find the building empty.  Several pairs of slippers were
laid out on the floor, and the place looked clean enough, though no one
appeared to be home.

The rough bus trip started to take its toll and Keitaro ventured into
the room marked "landlord" assuming it was his aunt's.  After a little
rest and a brief pity party for his plight, the knotted muscles in his
back got the better of him.

"Isn't there a hot springs here?" he asked the room in general.  No one
answered, of course, but his memory indicated that there was, indeed.
He stretched and rose to go find it.  There was nothing better for an
aching back, after all.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

"Is he dead?" a soft, almost childish voice asked, almost sounding
frightened.

Struggling with the fuzziness in his skull, he sat up, his hand going to
his throbbing temples.  "Gajaka vosh," he spat, a choice curse he'd
picked up on a mining colony some time back that translated to an
anatomical impossibility for most sentient creatures.  "What happened...
the ship..."

"What is he saying?" a voice asked and the sound of several feet backing
away could be heard.

"What the hell happened?  Were we attacked?  Was there a woman found as
well?"  He asked, looking up for the first time and realizing that the
bright lights overhead were not those of a medical bay, or even the
haphazard lighting of a pirate vessel.  Instead, the bright light was a
pure golden sunlight streaming through an open window. This fact sank in
at approximately the same time as the realization that the voices had
been speaking Japanese, a language three hundred years dead.

The final shock was seeing them.  The girls he had lost that fateful day
six hundred years ago, all standing around him and staring.

"Gajaka vosh," he muttered again as the darkness came surging back and
he fainted, falling backwards.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Author's notes:

So, what is this, exactly?  It's a kind of amalgamation of a fic idea I
had about 6 years ago and Love Hina.  It's not necessary to read the
original fic (it was Sailor moon based) in order to understand what's
going on here.  To a large extent, the science is just a setup for the
real story, so don't worry about it making sense (it makes BS sense
unless you really think about it, then it's obviously BS).

In any case, if you read this, drop me a line.  I'm interested in
getting feedback so that I can decide how to continue this one.
Positive or negative feedback is welcome, it all helps to make a better
story.



	
		
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