Tenchi Muyo Fan Fiction ❯ Ryakudatsu Muyo (No Need for Piracy) ❯ Tokkun Muyou (No Need for Special Training) ( Chapter 4 )

"Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond;

cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education."

-- Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910), American writer.

[alias Mark Twain]

Noboyuki sat at the dining room table-a rare occurrence in the Masaki household, as he spent most of his time asleep or buried under work at the office-and reflected on the last several days.

Tenchi sure has been working hard with Father, lately, he thought, looking out the window. I guess it's good he has something to focus on, but it's a shame it's not one of the pretty girls around here. It's really about time he should be interested in that kind of thing. But I guess I'm not much of an example, always keeping busy with work... I hope I'm not teaching him to grow up a bachelor all his life...

He thought back to previous attempts to convince his son that it was time he start thinking seriously about women, and how futile his efforts had been. It only seemed to make him frustrated, like he didn't even want to hear about it.

"What could make a young man act like that?" he asked himself.

"He could be gay," said a woman's voice.

Noboyuki turned blue.

"In theory, at any rate," added Washuu, stepping into the room from her laboratory door. "But I don't believe that's the case with Tenchi, if you're thinking what I think you're thinking."

Noboyuki wasn't listening.

"MY SON IS NOT GAY! I WILL NOT HEAR OF IT!" he screamed, squeezing his eyes shut and covering his ears. "LALALALALALALA!"

Washuu started at him grimly, then turned and walked out to the porch, leaving Noboyuki behind, still shutting out the world.

What a ninny, she thought, irately, stepping outside and gazing up toward the hilltop shrine. The ring of steel striking steel was faintly audible from among the trees. You'd think someone like him could understand Tenchi's indecision; and I'm sure the last thing he wants to do is talk about women with his father. I'm sure the last thing ANYBODY wants to do is talk about women with Tenchi's father.

She shook her head and took in a breath of fresh morning air. There was something about actually being in the outdoors air that even she had never completely successfully replicated in the laboratory, and she had been hard at work for days. Something peculiar had happened to spacetime at a suspiciously precise location, but it extended well outside the four-dimensional membrane of normal spacetime. She had been making dimensional resonance observations, putting together multiphasic harmonic comparison graphs, and cross referencing with twenty thousand years of intensive research-all yielding no definitive answers.

No plausible ones, at least.

Bah, you're being unscientific, Washuu scolded herself. You can't casually dismiss something without investigation, no matter how unlikely it seems. I'll just need to make more observations to confirm. Face-to-face, if I can.

* * * * *

Clang!

With a fluidly woven parry, skip, and quick, technically seamless pounce, the sword cleaved air and sliced a neat rip in Tenchi's white shirt.

"Focus, Tenchi!" cried Yosho, springing forward again in pursuit, his unremitting onslaught of blows parried frantically by his grandson.

"Focus?!" Tenchi yelped in response, ducking a slash. "Are you trying to teach me, or kill me?!"

"You need to be prepared, don't you?! Listen, Tenchi! When you attack"-the old man casually sidestepped a downward slash, letting it slide off his own blade with a delicate ring-"you must do so deliberately! And when you defend"-he continued, dashing around to the side astoundingly fast even for a man in his prime, bringing his sword around in an arc and downward at Tenchi's shoulder-"you must do so gracefully!"

Ka-kang!

Yosho raised an eyebrow.

His blade rested against Tenchi's, where the boy had spun and blocked it behind his back to recover from his awkwardly low sword and the older man's superior angle of attack.

"Hm. Much better, Tenchi."

"Yeah, that was pretty good!" Tenchi grinned over his shoulder, aglow with pride.

Then he fell head over heels with a CRASH as Yosho struck him upside the head.

"Don't let yourself get cocky," replied the old man. "No enemy will kill you faster than pride."

"Got it," Tenchi mumbled from the ground.

"Mm. Well, that's enough for now, Tenchi. Remember, your training continues tomorrow morning."

I'm sore enough already, thought Tenchi, as his thoughts drifted back to the last week. But I can't let everyone down, either...

* * * * *

A week earlier, the wind had keened and howled in fanfare to the landing of Ryuu-Ou, announcing Aeka's return from the conference. Mihoshi was thrilled to see Aeka had come back sooner than expected, and Ryoko's frustration was at least partly mollified by the availability of Sasami's cooking.

Only once everyone was seated at the dining room table did Aeka speak up to answer the questions she had postponed earlier (for which Ryoko had accused her of purposely building up suspense).

"To reiterate," she began formally, as though addressing a public speech to the Empire, "I assure you that we are very much unharmed, if perhaps a little shaken after our ordeal."

If it was your ordeal, thought Ryoko, peering at Aeka, why is it you're the one who came back?

"As to the incident itself... well... I presume that you have heard of the young woman who was abducted, of course: Lady Asahi Takebe." Aeka took on a more concerned expression as she continued. "We had been acquaintances-Asahi-chan, Sasami-chan, and myself-some seven hundred years ago, when our family frequently visited her homeworld of Ryuuten."

"Ryuuten, huh?" asked Washuu. "That's the source of most of the hulls for the Juraian Royal Trees. Supposedly, the Hou school of craftsmen are not only masters of their art, but work a couple dozen times faster than expert sculptors of other styles, and all without using machinery."

Stop stealing my spotlight! Aeka fumed, shadowed, behind Washuu until the scientist was finished with her monologue.

"Ahem," continued the Imperial Juraian Princess, faux-delicately. "Yes, that is correct. Asahi-chan is the daughter of Nomori Takebe, generally considered the most likely candidate for selection as the next Master Sculptor of Ryuuten. This lends Lord Takebe no small amount of prestige among the nobility, of course."

"They say the Master Sculptor of Ryuuten functionally outranks the official planetary government, isn't that right?" interrupted Washuu over her cup of tea.

"Hahahah! So a bunch of carpenters can kick around The Man, is what you're saying?!" piped up Ryoko, belly laughing.

"That is all really quite irrelevant to this story, don't you think?!" Aeka grated, glaring around the table.

"At any rate... Sasami-chan and I have known Asahi-chan since we all were children. The incident happened so quickly there was nothing we could do. We had stepped outside, when there was a commotion by the doors to the conference hall. It was not far, but by the time I had reached it, I had only a glimpse of the man disappearing with poor, helpless Asahi-chan."

"Mihoshi read us the Galaxy Police report," commented Tenchi, "but that's about all we heard on that, either."

"What was he like?" Ryoko interjected. "Maybe they were really just running off together. Speaking of which..." she grinned and leaned casually against Tenchi as she trailed off, and he wilted uncomfortably.

"Can you at least save your rutting for your own time?" fumed Aeka. "And no, they were most certainly not `running off together.' First of all, Asahi-chan has led a... rather sheltered life, and would never think of eloping, especially not with an individual of that sort. While I must admit he had... ah... dignified features, his character was positively rakish and bestial.

"Speaking of which," she concluded, smirking daintily and slyly glancing at Ryoko, "perhaps you ought to run off with him and produce little monsters somewhere."

"So did you see anything else?" interrupted Tenchi, hoping to prevent another day of violence-and to circumvent the dining room getting demolished again-since Ryoko was looking ready to retaliate.

Aeka glanced at Tenchi and paused in thought. "Well, I saw him only briefly, Lord Tenchi... but I do recall he wore the most peculiar costume. All in black, I remember, with a silver-ornamented coat, and a large hat with this absurd white feather rising- Lord Tenchi?"

She blinked at him once, and then glanced around self-consciously at the mix of surprised (Tenchi and Mihoshi) and enraged (Ryoko and Ryo-Ouki) reactions.

Each of them, despite their differing reactions, had one thought in common: Takeo.

"What did I say?" Aeka murmured, uncomfortably.

* * * * *

Clack!

Tenchi balanced delicately on a wooden peg driven into the ground-a feat made no easier by awkward sandals-and then leapt to another, swinging his bokken upward to knock the wooden block upward once more with precision. He winced briefly at the afternoon sun, but tried to ignore it, springing again in pursuit of his target.

The morning, he had spent in other training. He had exercised himself physically, and his grandfather had exercised him mentally through the Tenchi-ken to improve his self-control and discipline during confrontation.

"That," the old man had stated, "is your problem, Tenchi. You are blessed with great skill, but you panic when faced with dangerous situations. You are brave, Tenchi, but it is a thinking man's bravery; it lasts only as long as your self-control. If you plan to fight a seasoned enemy such as this Captain Kobayashi, then you must train yourself to maintain your composure in all situations and all conditions."

And so, he had formed a mental link with Tenchi by way of the Master Key and they spent much of the morning running through psychological exercises (Washuu had dropped by to explain something about maintaining beta-waves instead of alpha-waves, the lot of which had done nothing to aid Tenchi's concentration). They had continued until Tenchi could scarcely think straight.

A much-needed break for lunch and rest followed, after which Tenchi had headed up the hill to the usual training area, where he was practicing his agility, footwork, and precision that afternoon. Crack! went the block of wood, struck by Tenchi's bokken, punctuating the tak-tak of his hard-soled sandals against the pegs which he regularly practiced on. In theory, at least, they forced him to be sure of each step he made and to maintain ideal balance when striking.

"That's your special workout, Tenchi?"

He stopped and glanced toward where the owned of the familiar, playful voice was reclining against a tree. "Hey, it's harder than it looks, Ryoko!"

With that, the wooden block dropped on his head and he fell over backward with a CRASH.

"Ow..."

"Tenchi!" Ryoko yelped as she sprang up and hovered over to check on him. "You okay, Tenchi?"

"Yeah," he replied, accepting the hand she offered, "I think so..."

"Are you sure you're okay, Tenchiii?" she persisted, grinning and helping him up to his feet with far more contact than necessary, somewhere between fawning and molestation.

"Really, I'm fine!" he exclaimed, reddening and struggling. "H-hey! Cut that out, Ryoko!"

She laughed and relented, if slowly and less than enthusiastically. "So what's with hopping around like that and picking fights with blocks of wood, Tenchi? If that's supposed to be training, I wonder if the old man's pulling a fast one on you."

"Well, it's supposed to work on balance and timing, and-"

"Hah!" she interrupted. "That's like playing ping-pong to work on your reflexes. There's only one way I trust to get practice."

Tenchi stared at her. "Ryoko, you spend all day sitting around, doing nothing but eating, sleeping, and loafing around."

"That's because I've already practiced the best way there is!" she answered, smirking, one hand on her hip and the other held out to the side, open.

"I know I'll regret asking," Tenchi replied, hesitant but resigned, "but what way is that?"

"Life-or-death battle!" Ryoko grinned in response and propelled herself at him suddenly, slashing crosswise with her fierce red energy blade the moment it coalesced.

"HEY!" Tenchi yelped, stumbling backward and reflexively trying to parry with his bokken, which was sliced cleanly through without offering a whit of resistance. The severed length of wood fell away unceremoniously.

It recalled instantly their less than promising second meeting, which happened to result in Ryoko igniting a gas main and accidentally demolishing most of the high school; Tenchi still wasn't completely convinced she had only been playing.

"C'mon, Tenchi!" she laughed, grinning fiercely and backing him against a tree-her idea of play always seemed to involve her as the cat and someone else as the mouse. "Let's get serious, here!"

"You're telling ME to get serious?!" Tenchi cried in response as he ducked another slash; Ryoko's blazing weapon cut through the tree as easily as it had Tenchi's bokken and he scrambled to get out of the way as the tree leaned and fell with the crackle of sundering limbs and the thundering CRASH of the trunk striking the ground.

"C'mon! This isn't track and field, Tenchiii!" she answered, drawing out the end of his name coyly, laughter in her voice.

In a blur, she was in front of him once again.

Tenchi clenched his jaw and shook his head, eyes shut tightly in frustration, no move made to defend himself. "Stop it already, Ryoko! This isn't funny! This isn't the time for stupid games!"

Ryoko blinked at his reaction, glaring and tensing. For a protracted moment, she stared at him shutting out the world, and then whipped an open hand across his face with a loud slap in the stillness of the woods.

"Stupid games?!" she growled as he staggered in surprise, eyes popped open wide, and touched a hand to his quickly reddening cheek; he couldn't remember a time when she had struck him-at least not in such a serious, even castigatory way-and it left him stunned speechless.

"Stupid games?" she repeated, more evenly but no less sternly. "You're planning on going up against a top-of-the-list pirate. This isn't a Kendo Club meet, Tenchi; this is a life-or-death battle against a cold-blooded bastard who's-"

She hesitated at a rare instance of swallowing her pride, and glanced away. "...who's beaten both of us before. I'm not letting you any where near him unless I know you're as ready as you can be, even if I have to hogtie you to keep you here. Don't you understand that?"

Tenchi blinked at Ryoko, staring in quiet amazement at her wholly uncharacteristic gravity.

"Ryoko..." he said, hesitating as she glanced toward him.

"Sorry, Ryoko," he continued, smiling in humble contrition and absently rubbing his reddened cheek. "I shouldn't have said something like that when you're trying to help me..."

She watched him a moment, eyes softening gradually. Without warning, she was upon him-but she only clutched him tightly, pressing her cheek against his and causing the other to redden as well.

"Shh... it's okay, Tenchi..." she said, softly, arms wrapped about him snugly. "I shouldn't have hit you like that, either..."

"Nn, that's all right, Ryoko. I was kind of asking for it. And besides..."

He grinned teasingly, as the Master Key activated in his hand, behind her back. "I win!"

Ryoko blinked and smirked. Sneaky tactics, huh?

"I guess you do," she grinned, leaning and nipping playfully at his earlobe. "You're not going to take advantage of me, now that I'm at your mercy," she whispered into his ear, "are you, Tenchiii...?"

He blushed suddenly and tensed throughout, the blue-white blade of the Master Key flickering out once again. Ryoko laughed teasingly in his ear and held him tighter; she held him so tightly he felt he bend of his ribs and heard the air hissing from his lungs despite his struggle to hold it in. She brushed a leg suggestively against his and inhaled slowly to squeeze her chest against him-Tenchi stood stock still, head swimming with crossing signals of seduction and stark terror.

"Psychological warfare 101, Tenchi," she whispered coyly into his ear, nuzzling his face with a playful affection sharply contrasting her crushing grip.

"Th- that's cheating!" he wheezed with the last of his forcibly escaping breath.

"Pirate," she answered, no less playful. "Always-always-count on a pirate to cheat. Understand?"

He nodded slowly, and then eagerly when she didn't respond.

Slowly, she loosed her grip on him, grinned, and kissed his cheek while he was helplessly gasping to regain the breath she had squeezed out of him. "See? Didn't I tell you this is the best way to learn?"

"I guess it is hands-on..." he muttered reluctantly.

"That's right!" Ryoko laughed, hovering backward.

"Oh, and Tenchi?" she added.

"Huh?"

She flashed a fierce, predatory grin as she darted forward at him once more, her energy blade reforming. "Keep your guard up!"

* * * * *

Somewhere in interstellar space, a vessel of singularly excellent Hou school craftsmanship drifted lazily. Just a few short lightyears distant, several more ships of a more industrialized design hovered, carefully keeping pace with the Ryuuten craft.

"My dear friend Mimasaka," said a young man's voice in a casually playful tone, "could you be so kind as to power up the stardrive?"

The crystalline interface unit of Mimasaka hovered alongside the owner of the voice where he reclined in a hammock suspended from two hovering spheres, his wide-brimmed hat draped over his face with its white feather pointing straight upward. One hand played idly with the silver detailing of his coat, and the other absently tilted his pistol marked Havermeyer 15mm toward the interface unit as though reminding it of the situation.

"Scoundrel!" shrieked Mimasaka through the interface. "Villain!"

"Let me know when you're done."

"Knave! Rogue! Louse! Pirate!"

The young man lay silently in his hammock, the spheres shifting rhythmically to replicate the restful sway in the spars of a ship at sail on a gentle sea.

"Done," Mimasaka grudgingly murmured, running out of epithets.

"Good. Now, as I was saying, power up the stardrive."

"Planning to run away from the Galaxy Police?" the interface unit twittered as the soft hum of the stardrive activated.

The young man let out a peal of near-uproarious laughter (falling short of "uproarious" only because he failed to compromise his entirely relaxed posture) and reached to pat the side of the interface unit patronizingly.

"That's cute, Mimasaka. It's a fortunate thing I hate to see a pretty girl like Miss Asahi cry, though, or I might not be quite so appreciative. Savvy?"

He tilted up the edge of his hat when Mimasaka made no reply, smirked at the interface unit, and let the hat drop down completely over his face once again.

"At any rate," he continued, drumming his empty hand's fingers lazily against his opposite arm, "prime the spatial flux grid to 577 terrahertz, say, 9 arc-minutes precision; and bring us about on maneuver engines, oh, let's call it 179 degrees to port, pitch down 12 degrees. You got all that?"

"Well, yes," Mimasaka answered, confusedly. "If I might ask why..."

"Colonial planet #0315."

"What? You do know colonial planet #0315 is in a completely different direction," the ship's computer replied indignantly, "don't you?"

"You're a real Chatty Nancy, aren't you." The man chuckled, gesturing carelessly with his pistol. "Finished adjusting bearing yet?"

"Yes, yes, bearing adjusted," Mimasaka answered reluctantly.

"Excellent. Now then, if you'd be so kind as to open me a hailing channel, bypassing all comm systems starting with post-scrambling, and shunt the signal through the spatial flux grid," he said in the almost sing-song, jaded tone of a professor repeating simple instructions for the third time to an inattentive student.

Mimasaka's interface unit hung silently in the air for a moment, bewildered, before complying. "You mean to transmit a secure signal by subspatial resonance?"

"Quick one, eh?" The young man as he reached into his pocket, producing a data storage unit. "And I want you to show only what's on this as our video transmission."

* * * * *

Far away, on Ryuuten, the signal arrived almost instantly, allowed by the singular properties of subspace to bypass the lightspeed limit of normal spacetime. Three figures, varying in size, but each wrapped in a dark, hooded shroud, stood by the console which had detected it.

"It's a subspace carrier wave," said the shortest, almost casually. "Strange..."

"Strange?" inquired the figure of intermediate size, nonchalant. "How so, Mushima?"

"The signature travels like stardrive wake, broad across the subspace band, but at a set frequency," answer Mushima. "I suspect it must be someone who doesn't want the transmission to be noticed, Hishima."

"Gyeh," commented the tallest, deeply.

"Yes, Takashima, I agree," Hishima replied. "Let us answer this call."

Mushima keyed in the commands to open a communications channel, tuning his sophisticated bank of equipment to reply with a similar subspace carrier wave. As the video screen activated, it displayed only a still-frame image of a white skull above crossed white cutlasses, all on a black background.

Hishima stared at the image, briefly silently.

"Is this a joke?" he asked, only in part rhetorically.

"A joke?" echoed a young man's voice over the communication channel, his tone almost contumeliously relaxed; he sounded distinctly as though he felt he could be doing hundreds of other things with his time if so inspired.

"Why, not at all," he continued, lazily. "That right there is Captain `Calico' Jack Rackam's Jolly Roger, there, circa early 18th century, Earth. You ought to pay it a little respect; the fellow may have had a little trouble with catching a lady more than he could handle, but few aside were the men who captured the piratical spirit like Calico Jack. And actually, I may just have a little business offer in which you fine gentlemen might be interested."

A pirate with a "business offer," Hishima thought, considering the idea coldly. He doubted he would care what the outlaw had to say, but knew he stood to lose nothing my listening.

"What is this offer you speak of?"

"You're looking for a certain set of files, aren't you? I can deliver those to you-for a price. And I'm only willing to negotiate the final deal with your boss."

Mushima and Takashima looked to Hishima as he stood quietly regarding the Jolly Roger grinning morbidly at them.

"You seem quite well-informed."

"It's got to do with my line of business. Now, just in case you're not interested enough to work with me, I'm sure I could find plenty of other people out there eager to snatch up the Hou secrets of the Royal Trees; but I'm willing to bet you're willing to come through for me. Isn't that right?"

"Hmh. What is your name?"

"You can call me Captain Takeo Kobayashi, for now; then again, why not just `Captain.' I've got a feeling we'll be getting along nicely, so long as you don't try to back out of anything, don't you?"

"You know where the files are now?" inquired Hishima, unhurried but equally uninterested in idle chatter.

"More or less, more or less; I know far better than you do, to say the least. I'll get in contact with you again when I'm ready to iron things out with your boss. Just remember: if I don't give you the files, they're going to the highest bidder. And if that's the Royalty, I guess it'll be too bad for you, wouldn't you say?"

"Quite," Hishima replied stiffly, growing irritated by the pirate's unabating insolence.

"Excellent!" answered the voice over the console's speakers. "You'll be hearing from be before to much longer, then. I like the cloaks, by the way: very mysterious, very chic."

"Close the channel," said Hishima gruffly.

Mushima complied. "Heh. Sounds like a plucky child, eh Hishima?"

"No matter. If this fool can produce the files, then all the better. We may yet be on schedule, after all."

"Gyeh?" inquired Takashima.

"If not?," repeated Hishima. "Heh. Well, the master will decide what his fate shall be, whether he keeps up his end of the bargain or not."