Aurora of Rainbow Fire chapter four: Reward and Punishment part b.
A Tenchi Muyo TV series lemon comedy by Nugar. Email the author at nugarthebarbarian@yahoo.com with any comments. All characters and situations copyright their creators, Hiroki Hayashi and Masaki Kajishima, and AiC and Pioneer and are used without permission. This is a nonprofit work only.
Far, far out beyond Pluto, it searched, automated systems scanning diligently for something rare in the universe.
The characteristic green-spectrum spike that indicated chlorophyll based plant life.
All the other planets suitable for its purposes were hostile, and would undoubtedly have sophisticated defense mechanisms set to stop anonymous travelers.
But not this one. Earth was not listed on most galactic charts for the same reason Beinville, Louisiana is not listed on most maps. There's nothing there of interest and no one in their right mind would want to go there, so why bother?
Well, the strange space pod wanted to. It had a delivery to make.
Preposterously low-tech cryogenic equipment (because any scientist worth his cesium uses insta-stasis fields now) began the laborious process of thawing the pod's single occupant. The approach was planned precisely so that the energy from the friction of atmospheric entry would be available for the final thawing.
There was no noise as it braked and used Jupiter's gravity as a sling to send it toward Saturn. There was no air in space to conduct sound. However, there was also precious little in the way of other 'noise', rendering it virtually invisible in the vastness of the solar system.
Despite the general low technological level, the rocklike space pod was remarkably efficient. Centuries had gone by as it had traveled the depths of deep space from system to system, coasting on a single tremendous push supplied from its origin. Even now the only energy it used was in minor course corrections; the sun provided the inward pull, and clever usage of the various planetary gravities supplied the brakes. After several circuits of the solar system, it finally fell on the final intercept course for Earth.
But something was in the way. A large modern spaceship was in far Earth orbit, hailing it on much of the spectrum. It had been cloaked until then, which is why the pod hadn't noticed it, although it hadn't noticed the pod up until now for much the same reason.
No matter. It was far too close to completing its mission to be stopped now. Its builder had planned for a contingency like this.
Nearly the entire rear portion of the space pod detached from the whole with a burst of stored energy. Then, antiquated tracking systems came online and targeted the newer spaceship, sending the newly made irregular missile flying toward it even as the rest continued to plummet toward the Earth.
The newer spaceship 'woke up' to full alert and started evasive maneuvers, easily keeping itself out of reach, but also unable to intercept the part heading toward the Earth. And when it did attempt to dart by, all of the remaining fuel that had powered the space pod for so long released its energy at once.
*beep* *beep*
Kiyone duly noted the signal from her portable link to Yagami, but continued to set out drinks for the couple at table seven. Business was quite busy this time in the morning. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Mihoshi do essentially the same thing as she took down an order on her side of the cafe, although with Mihoshi it was hard to tell. She might not have noticed at all.
*beep* *beep* *beep*
Uh oh. It was urgent. She'd better start thinking of excuses to give her boss so she could take off early. Kiyone was a Galaxy Police Officer first, and a waitress second.
*beep* *beep* *be-*
The origin of the sound that followed next was hard to identify. It put one in mind of a rendition of 'Flight of the Bumblebee' played on an organ comprised entirely of dog whistles. Why everyone in the cafe's ears didn't start bleeding remains a mystery to this day.
One waitress's tablet and pen hit the floor. Another waitress's (fortunately empty) serving tray hit the floor. And lastly, four sensible shoes hit the much-abused floor many times in rapid succession, suggesting running.
As she ran, Kiyone cursed her fate and ruefully wondered where she was going to find another job THIS time.
Mihoshi just ran, not really thinking about anything in particular, all of her attention devoted exclusively to the task of making it to the ship in the least amount of time possible.
Isn't deep brain structure command-response imprinting wonderful?
"Yes, I understand. Don't worry, I'll tell everyone. You can count on us. Good luck." *click*
Ayeka looked up from where she had replaced the phone in its cradle.
"Yes?" Ryoko asked expectantly from directly behind her.
"Eep!" Ayeka replied cleverly, jumping, spinning around, and pressing a hand over her heart. "Ryoko! Don't do that!" She had been jumpy all morning, given to brooding and long, thoughtful silences, always conspicuously away from her friend.
Ryoko simply quirked her mouth ironically and gave her a level stare. Her thoughts on Ayeka's odd behavior were a closely guarded secret, even to Sasami's careful probing.
"That was Kiyone and Mihoshi," Ayeka began, warming to her topic. "Apparently some sort of very small ship or space pod has crashed down in Africa. As there are no other GP vessels in this system, she asked if we would act as backup if they need it."
Ryoko looked interested. "Hey, that sounds like fun. I wonder who it is?"
Ayeka shook her head. "Apparently, it wouldn't respond to a request for information, other than to send a missile at Yagami. The explosion was negligible, Kiyone says, but the pod still managed to make it to Earth. There's no telling what sort of being could be on there, but the odds are it isn't good."
Ryoko shrugged. "Not necessarily. Had I been in that pod I would have shot at a GP vessel, too. They'd never catch me on an uninhabited planet, as long as I could make it to it."
"My point exactly," Ayeka deadpanned, almost back to her old self. "There could be someone like you on board."
Ryoko narrowed her eyes, a vision of last night coming unbidden to her mind's eye. "Very funny. I think little miss Princess is getting too uppity for her own good."
Ayeka's eyes narrowed as well; angry to hear such backtalk from her pet. She hadn't brought up the previous night's events because she was slightly embarrassed by her lack of control over herself, but she might just have to remind the pirate of her place. "Oh? And just what do you think you're going to do about it?"
Abruptly Ryoko was all sweetness and innocence. "Oh, Ayeka-chan, I forgot to tell you. Sasami and I took a little stroll through the forest surrounding the shrine yesterday."
A guarded look crept onto Ayeka's face. (What is she getting at?) she wondered. "Yes...?"
"Well," Ryoko said in a matter of fact tone, "We were walking along and enjoying the scenery, and Sasami happened to notice an old bird nest in one of the trees." She smiled, enjoying the growing look of fear on Ayeka's face. "I just _had_ to fly up there and look, and wouldn't you know it?" she said, reaching behind her head to extricate something hidden in her hair. "I found just the most beautiful pretty blue feather lying there in that nest," she continued, pulling out a large light blue wing feather and waving it in a mesmerizing pattern. "I said to myself, 'You know, Ryoko, I bet Ayeka would just love that feather. I should bring it back and give it to her as a gift.' And I did. Do you want your present now, Ayeka-chan?"
Ayeka gulped and shook her head franticly; all thoughts of her position vanishing like fog in a strong morning sunbeam. "Oh, no," she replied, giggling nervously. "You shouldn't have. Really!"
"Oh, but I did." Ryoko's posture changed subtly, becoming more of a fighting stance. "I was saving it for later, but I realize that you need it now." She advanced menacingly, still twirling the feather.
"Oh, no, I couldn't accept that," Ayeka protested, backing up. "Really, such an elaborate gift for little old me? I really couldn't." She bumped backwards into a wall and scrabbled sideways until she could continue retreating through the door.
"Oh, but I insist," Ryoko insisted.
"I couldn't possibly," Ayeka protested weakly, glancing furtively behind herself.
"But it's rude to turn down a gift," Ryoko replied. "And I'm afraid you don't have much choice in the matter." With a battle cry and a lunge, she grabbed for the princess.
Ayeka yipped like a startled Pomeranian and dashed away, Ryoko hot on her trail.
Sasami was just about to walk up to the back door when it burst open, missing her by a scant few feet, and Ayeka came barreling out.
"ExcusemeSasami!" Ayeka called back, having all but knocked her younger sister down in her haste.
"Ayeka?!" she exclaimed, stumbling back a few steps after the bigger girl brushed by. "What-AHH!" she yelled again as Ryoko came flying out immediately after, a bright blue feather clenched in her teeth.
Rather than dodge and lose precious time, Ryoko simply made herself insubstantial, flowing around the little princess with ease.
Sasami stood in shocked silence, staring after them as they ran the short distance to the tree line.
"Miyah?"
"You and me both, Ryo-Ohki."
Ayeka ran like she'd never ran before, although not in the usual sense.
Despite her initial burst of speed that had given her some headway, Ayeka was a terrible runner. She was clumsy. Three times she had nearly fallen, and that was on flat ground. Her rhythm was off and her form was nonexistent. She took great gasps of breath whenever she could, but she usually had it jarred right back out by landing heavily after yet another overextended stride, leaving her in even greater oxygen debt than before. She didn't watch where she was going. Despite knowing full well what happens to people who look back in the movies, she kept her head turned as she ran, trying to keep Ryoko in sight. And her choice of running apparel was terrible as well, as a bright yellow and green flower print kimono isn't the loosest garment in the world. She had already discarded her obi to the wind and threw the kimono open as best she could, trying to give her tightly wrapped legs more space to move.
The cause of all this ineptitude is unknown, as Ayeka was actually in great physical condition and well trained in many sports, including track. Nevertheless, she ran so badly that Ryoko finally quit toying with her and simply tackled her gently to the ground in order to prevent her from hurting herself.
Ryoko's form was, of course, flawless. Many an American football coach would have wept with pride at such a tackle and demanded a thousand pushups of anyone who insinuated that manly men don't weep. She came in midway up Ayeka's body, hitting her in the butt with her left upper arm and shoulder and positioning her head to Ayeka's right. Due to the angle of attack, Ryoko's head ended up slightly in front of the purple-haired princess, and Ryoko's right arm wrapped around from the front, pushing on Ayeka's left side even as her other arm pulled from the rear, twisting the princess off her feet.
It would have hurt a whole lot more if Ryoko hadn't used her powers to slow the fall enough for her to get her own body out from Ayeka's path of descent and allow the still flailing girl to thump gently down on the grassy earth between two well- leafed trees.
Then, as Ayeka tried to regain her breath, Ryoko straddled her thighs and sat, grabbing both of her slender wrists in one vice like hand and stretching forward to pin them down above Ayeka's head. Then she used her power to increase her relative weight, making doubly sure the princess wouldn't escape.
This also positioned her face about six inches from her captive's, and although she did have one hand free, Ryoko chose to keep the feather in her mouth for the moment. This was great. She grinned in triumph at the no longer haughty princess.
Ayeka shifted and struggled, acutely aware of the vulnerability of her position. Usually, she was in control and trying to create this kind of feeling.
Ah, well. Research.
"Unh unh unhh," Ryoko said through her closed mouth, lightly dragging the end of the feather down the side of Ayeka's face.
"AH! Don't do that!" She squirmed more and snapped at the feather, forcing Ryoko to withdraw or risk losing her instrument of vengeance. Her torment halted for the moment, Ayeka looked up at her ex-rival's face framed in teal hair.
"Laughing a bit early now, aren't we?" Ryoko murmured as she watched the princess giggle beneath her. "I haven't even _begun_ yet."
"No, no, that's not it," Ayeka replied contritely, amusement dancing in her eyes. "It's just the way you looked just then reminded me of an Earth saying I heard on television a few weeks ago."
Ryoko looked intrigued. "Oh? What was it?"
Ayeka grinned impishly. "You looked like the cat that ate the canary."
Ryoko slowly reached up and removed the feather from her mouth, studying it thoughtfully. A smile slowly crept across her face as she considered the statement. "You know, I kind of like that."
Ayeka snorted delicately. "You would, you little sex kitten."
"Mrrroww."
Ayeka shivered ever so slightly.
One of Ryoko's eyebrows raised. "My... My. You know, I'm glad you finally got rid of that bug up your ass. You've been too damned moody this morning." Ayeka really was kind of cute, pinned to the ground as she was. Her hair was in disarray, flared out around and underneath her head, and Ryoko could see several twigs and leaves that had gotten bound up in the dark silky mass.
"Sorry," Ayeka apologized, thinking similar thoughts, staring up at the violently innocent pirate whom she had fought with most of her life. (Those eyes, those eyes were it,) Ayeka thought. Everything about Ryoko could be read through her beautiful, soulful eyes. Then she shivered again as she realized that those selfsame eyes were looking down into her flared kimono. She wasn't wearing a bra thanks to the tenderness the leather outfit had caused.
(She's not wearing a bra,) Ryoko thought, having just noticed.
The tableau held for several long moments, neither girl quite sure what to do or say.
"Ah, erm, I was thinking, earlier," Ayeka said finally.
"You? Thinking? No!" Ryoko mocked, her free hand across her breast and a look of astonishment on her face.
"I think!" Ayeka replied indignantly.
"You think what?" Ryoko asked, suddenly innocent.
"I think-" Ayeka started to repeat, but was cut off.
"You think you think? You mean you're not sure? You must have more in common with Mihoshi than I thought!"
"Ryoko..." Ayeka growled, the fire that drove her the previous night starting to grow once again.
"Alright, alright, I'm sorry. Go ahead," Ryoko apologized.
"As I was saying," she said very definitely, daring the pirate to comment. "We may have been a little rash earlier in deciding to go back to separate beds." Ayeka was actually stretching a point there. As a matter of fact, she had forcefully acted demure and tucked the cyan-haired woman in her own bed, then gone to take a cold bath, brush her teeth furiously, and curl up on the couch, all the while insisting that they should share Tenchi's loneliness and sleep separately. Further justification had been the reasoning that she would sleep better without Ryoko's freezing feet rubbing her legs.
"It is kinda silly," Ryoko agreed. "I mean, when you think about it."
"My point exactly!" Ayeka exclaimed. "So," she continued in a more subdued tone, "I would be most pleased if you would care to rejoin me."
"Cold feet and all?"
"Cold feet and all."
"Ayeka-chan, I would be glad." Then, on impulse, she leaned forward once more and gave her a quick kiss.
"Err, yes," Ayeka replied, dumbfounded. "I knew you didn't like the couch, but I had no idea you hated it that much."
Ryoko nodded seriously. "You have no idea. Why, sometimes inconsiderate people walk by and dump ice water on me in my sleep."
Ayeka giggled, once. Then she looked up at Ryoko, eyes all wide and innocent. "So, now that you've caught me, what are you going to do with me?" she asked in a high voice that made her sound years younger.
"Well, I'd pretty much figured on tickling you with this feather until you screamed for mercy for a while. Gotta make sure you learn your lesson. 'S for your own good."
Ayeka nodded back, big-eyed.
"Or," Ryoko said, cocking her head sideways at the princess. "Say 'I submit to your will, most powerful and feared space pirate Ryoko.' and we can skip your punishment and go back in to wait for Tenchi. Deal?"
Ayeka visibly considered it; all that was missing was one finger on her lips as she looked upwards and to one side. Then she focused back on her capturer. "Nah, I don't like that deal. Tell you what, you let me up, bow, apologize for getting your mistress all dirty, and I'll be extra lenient the next time you're naughty."
Ryoko grinned and shook her head. "Nah. Where's the fun in that?"
"Well then, we appear to be at a standoff."
Ryoko shook her head. "What makes you think that? You're at _my_ mercy, remember? I guess I need to remind you of that after all." Her hand started moving in an intricate series of evasive maneuvers; all done for show, as there really was little Ayeka could do about it.
The bright pretty blue feather mesmerized the fallen princess, captivating her attention as it wove and spun, fell, darted and dipped in to gently caress the line of her jaw.
Ayeka tensed as the tip connected, but the spot wasn't one of the most sensitive and Ryoko was using a bit too much pressure for it to really tickle, so she soon relaxed. At least until Ryoko brought it up to just barely tease the end of her nose.
"Ahh... AHh... AHH...!"
"Whoops!" Ryoko said quickly, removing the feather.
"Ahhh..." Ayeka sighed, the urge to sneeze fading. "YEEK!" she said again as Ryoko's feather danced around the underside of her arm.
Ryoko knew from past experience that Ayeka was extremely vulnerable to underarm sensations, and promptly put that knowledge to evil use. Ayeka immediately degenerated into mindless, out of breath giggles under Ryoko's ministrations. Due to the princess's sensitivity, she did relent and allow her time to catch her breath, which she did in great gasps.
"Oh... okay, now that you've had your fun, can we go in? Please?" Ayeka all but begged.
Ryoko visibly considered it, and she did have a finger on her lips as she looked upwards to one side. Then she refocused her attention on her prisoner. "No." She resumed her attack.
Ayeka squirmed and fought with all her strength, giggling hysterically as Ryoko tormented her. Her struggles were so fierce that she nearly unseated the pirate, but Ryoko's strength was far greater and the effort was in vain.
Ryoko loved it. She would occasionally switch sides and tickle the other arm because it was funny when Ayeka started throwing her head from side to side and screaming her name.
"Ryoko! ReeooKOO! dOn't doOO THAT! PLEASE!" Ayeka screamed at the top of her lungs.
Mercifully, Ryoko stopped.
"Do what?" she asked.
Ayeka gasped for several seconds. "Don't, *huf*, do that. Please."
"Do that?" she asked, demonstrating.
"YAH!"
"Okay," Ryoko agreed easily. "I won't do that anymore."
"*huff* *huff* thank you..." Ayeka sighed and allowed her tired and strained neck to rest, laying her head back on the ground.
Ryoko stuck the feather in her mouth and brought her free hand up to grasp Ayeka's wrists as well, releasing them with her other hand to give her arm a break. Then she started pulling at the opening of Ayeka's kimono, freeing it more and giving herself a wider access to the inside.
"Ah, Ryoko?" Ayeka asked, once again raising her head. "What are you doing?"
Ryoko paused and looked directly at the flushed princess. "Oh, this? Nothing much. Just finding more of your sensitive spots." She resumed her task.
"Nooo..." Ayeka sobbed.
Ryoko halted yet again, this time slightly exasperated, and looked at Ayeka in annoyance. "Look. If you don't want me to tickle you, all you have to say is 'Ryoko, I really don't like this. Please stop it.' and we can go back in. Otherwise, cut the crap."
Ayeka's mouth pressed into a hard, thin line and her eyes bore intensely into Ryoko's. "Ryoko, I really don't like this."
"Fine." Ryoko said curtly, jerking the feather out of her mouth with her left hand and preparing to get up.
"...but I want you to do it anyway."
"Ah," Ryoko ahhed, breaking into a smile. "Well, you had your chance." She lightly touched the top of Ayeka's right breast with the end of the feather.
"Heehee, ohh no," Ayeka protested.
Ryoko lifted it and stuck her face about three inches in front of Ayeka. "Look, are you going to quit complaining or what?"
Ayeka stared at her in disbelief for a second, then yelled angrily. "WILL YOU FIGURE IT OUT ALREADY?! It's a part of the damned game!"
Ryoko threw her head back and laughed hard. "Princess, I knew from the start. I just like jerking your chain, that's all."
Ayeka's face clouded and her hands balled into tight, hard fists. "Ooooh!"
Ryoko laughed again. "You're _so_ easy to manipulate," she said idly, twirling the feather back and forth between her fingers. "All it takes is pushing the right... Buttons..." She trailed off, using the feather to flick at Ayeka's bared right nipple.
"HoooOOHH!" Ayeka giggled in discomfort, her voice rising at the end. Despite it all, she really didn't like being tickled. Really. It just got her painfully excited, was all.
But Ryoko did it anyway, lightly dragging the feather in ever increasing circles around Ayeka's breast, delighting in the way Ayeka squirmed and fought. Even Tenchi didn't react like this, although his, 'reactions', were fun in their own right. Ryoko shifted her position to the side, pushing her left leg beneath Ayeka's and locking her ankles together on the other side, giving her even more unrestricted access to the uppity princess.
One of the less widely known tidbits of information about Juraians was that they were almost universally ticklish, and Ayeka was not one of the few exceptions.
She screamed, she begged, and when her breath ran out, she arched her back and slammed it into the ground over and over as Ryoko's very naughty hand disappeared under her kimono and emerged minus the feather.
Ryoko's fingertips danced the Monkey, the Chicken, and the Nitty Gritty _all_ up and down Ayeka's side, frequently at the same time, then did an impromptu and extremely bad version of the Highland fling across the sensitive line of her stomach, just above the waistband of her panties.
Ayeka didn't know any of those dances; for that matter, neither did Ryoko. Ayeka's face suddenly got very serious as she raised her head to watch Ryoko's hand at play. That only lasted for a few seconds though, as Ryoko pinched the inside of her thigh with a gleeful expression on her face. Fresh laughter erupted from her tormented throat as her eyes squinched close on her tears and she threw her head back.
She fought to raise her head again, desperately attempting to bite Ryoko's left forearm when it got too close to her face, but she noticed Ryoko's hand, all but the first two fingers curled into a ball, do a line dance across her belly like the one they had saw on Earth TV. That was weird enough, but when Ryoko started using her fingers to do high kicks and humming "Da da daaa da, da da dada ta," as an accompanyment, neither of them could take it any longer and they both burst into laughter.
They lay like that for several moments, sharing the moment. Ayeka used one of her now free hands to wipe her eyes and curled the other arm down around Ryoko's shoulders, lightly stroking her hair. Ryoko flopped back, throwing her arm wide as she laughed, but soon curled onto her side, grinning at Ayeka.
"I must say, that is one of the silliest punishments I've ever had to endure," commented the princess. "You certainly make things interesting in the oddest ways, Ryoko. Have you no sense of propriety?"
"Nope," Ryoko said grinning. "Not a one."
Ayeka sighed. "I thought not."
They both giggled again briefly, Ayeka starting in alarm and falling silent as Ryoko reached across and grabbed the edge of her kimono. She quickly relaxed as Ryoko only tugged it closed and let her hand lay on top.
"I miss Tenchi," Ryoko said finally.
Ayeka said nothing, merely nodding. Although she couldn't see it, Ryoko knew from the way she had moved. Ayeka hugged Ryoko close, squeezing hard before rubbing her arm up Ryoko's and lightly caressing the side of her face.
Ryoko sighed and closed her eyes, hugging back. It was hard to wait, but having a friend helped.
"This isn't what it looks like," Ayeka said finally.
"Huh?" Ryoko replied, raising up and looking at the princess. Then she noticed where Ayeka was looking and quickly turned to see Tenchi's grandfather standing a little ways away. "Oh... Ah, yeah." Ryoko said, indicating agreement with Ayeka's statement.
Katsuhito just stared at them impassively, or possibly just in shock.
Ayeka and Ryoko exchanged a look, then chorused together, "It's Mihoshi's fault!"
That got a chuckle.
"Girls, it wouldn't surprised me at all," he replied, chuckling and scratching the back of his head. "Pardon my interruption. I'll let you get back to your... Whatever." He turned and walked away toward the house at a stately pace.
"He thinks we were..." Ayeka said wonderingly. "You and I..."
"Well, Hell!" Ryoko replied, deliberately loud enough for her words to reach Katsuhito's ears. "What does he expect, telling Tenchi not to sleep with us any more until after marriage? That we'd just wait patiently?" She watched with glee as the elderly man stumbled in mid-step, then hurried inside.
"Out here among the trees..." said the purple-haired girl, still lost in the thought.
"Hah! Serves him right! I may respect Tenchi's grandfather as much as anyone else, but it's still his fault that we're in this mess. I've half a mind to just grab you, go find Tenchi, and blow this backwards planet," she said irritatedly.
"Your hand in my clothes..."
"Well, no, only Tenchi, but we could be back in civilization in a week, without all these funny attitudes about sex."
"Dancing on my velvet flesh..."
Ryoko glanced over at her zoned-out friend in irritation, tapping her hard on each side of the face. "Hey! He~y! Snap out of it, will ya, Ayeka? I'm trying to be pissed, here."
Ayeka turned a vacant, goofy grin on the pirate. "Yes?"
Ryoko screamed her anger at the heavens.
"There it is," Kiyone said quietly as she directed the unscathed Yagami through the upper levels of the stratosphere.
One part of the screen displayed an aerial view of a section of the African jungle just south of the equator. The space pod hadn't landed so much as simply hit almost dead on, creating a slightly oval shaped crater over a hundred and fifty meters across at its widest point. The steaming crater was nearly twenty meters deep where the pod now rested, and due to the copious amounts of groundwater to be had in the region it was slowly filling up with a murky brown sludge. Despite the fact that the crash had happened only four hours earlier, the water was just about to completely cover the cooling pod and was nearly halfway up the sides of the crater. All the immediately surrounding trees leaned away from the blast, making the rim a no man's land of twisted and broken splinters.
"I'm not picking up any life signs in the area," Mihoshi reported. "I think whoever it is has already gotten out." She looked at the screen and made a face. "We need to look for clues in the pod, but I wish it wasn't all yucky."
Kiyone nodded seriously. "We'll have Yagami tow it back up before we search it, but we need to do a careful sweep of the area to find whoever rode here in it. Or whatever. That's not a pod design I'm familiar with. Yagami is running a search in the database, but we've got no matches so far. We'll have to look inside and out to find out where it came from and who owns it."
Murky water was no hindrance to Yagami's sensors, and they scanned and probed, bringing up a 3-D schematic of the antiquated vessel on screen. Suddenly, the water around the pod started to bubble and steam, drawing both of their attentions to the screen.
The water boiled away in an instant, leaving the scorched earth to bake and fuse as the pod glowed white, melting to an inert lump of base materials in a matter of a few seconds.
Mihoshi brightened. "Oh, well. At least we don't have to get all dirty."
"There is that," Kiyone agreed. "So much for clues there. Let's find the owner and ask it where it came from instead."
"Right!" Mihoshi immediately had the computer search an even wider area, hoping to pick out the intruder before it got too far.
The computer immediately returned readings from hundreds of life signs of large animals within a half-mile radius. As the search went on even more beings were reported, flooding the screen with reports. None of them were in the database and all of them had potentially come from the crashed pod.
"Oh, my," Mihoshi murmured, awed by the rampant biodiversity. "There are too many readings. We may have trouble finding it in this."
"Great." Kiyone sighed, thinking. She kept Yagami high, well out of visual range of anything on the ground. No sense letting the other guy know where they were at until it was absolutely necessary.
Mihoshi frowned at the screen and keyboard, furrowing her brow and squinching up her face in a fair, if unintentional, parody of the 'thoughtful' face she saw other people use. Given that she usually had an open expression, she looked much like she had bitten into something sour. "I wonder..." she said to herself, tapping keys to the tune of a song she had heard earlier that day.
Kiyone frowned severely and rubbed at her temples. "We're not combat rangers, we're not equipped for this kind of search, especially since _you_ destroyed our last combat suit. We need our enviro-suits, and portable life scanners-"
"Like those in the equipment locker," Mihoshi replied, listening absently.
"-And capture field generators-"
"There's one under my bed," Mihoshi supplied helpfully, although she hoped her partner wouldn't ask why.
"-And insect repellant-"
"GP standard, equipment locker, third drawer on the left."
"-And most importantly, backup-"
"You did ask Ayeka and Ryoko if they would help," reminded the blonde, still typing away.
"-We can't do this. We don't even know how many of them there are, or where they are. This jungle is huge, how are we going to find it in this?"
"Found it!" chirped her partner happily.
Kiyone stared dumbfounded at the screen where Mihoshi had caused a blinking red light to appear, indicating a life form the computer had flagged as being non-native after Mihoshi had somehow managed to get it to understand the difference. She sagged back in her chair, crossing her arms and looking away in disgust. "Well, I didn't hear you say anything about the enviro- suits," she groused.
"I'm wearing mine," Mihoshi replied hesitantly, looking at her innocently. "I thought you were just thinking about the equipment lists. Didn't you get yours when we were at the apartment?"
Kiyone's eyes snapped open wide, and her head jerked around to stare at her partner's curvaceous form, completely covered by a one-piece GP uniform that provided protection from a wide variety of extreme environmental conditions.
Like temperature extremes, both hot and cold. And chemical irritants, such as industrial strength ammonia-based cleaners. Which was why both she and Mihoshi had taken them out of the ship, down to their apartments, and worn them every day to work during their brief stint at a fast-food place where they were either being splattered by grease, freezing in the refrigerator, or wiping at their watery eyes as they scrubbed everything in sight. The GP suits didn't draw attention under the long-sleeved uniform and could be a lifesaver when your bumbling co-worker caused you to spill six cups of near-boiling coffee on yourself. They didn't even stain.
Kiyone looked down at her own clothes; sensible shoes, socks, a light pink skirt that came to just above her knee, cream colored shirt, and a pink vest that matched her skirt. She was in uniform all right, but it was the wrong one. And thanks to budget cuts, there weren't any more on board.
Dammit, Mihoshi was the one that was supposed to pull this kind of stunt, not her!
"Ano, Kiyone?" Mihoshi asked again. "Why are you hitting your head on the control panel?"
Yagami plummeted from the sky.
Ayeka and Ryoko walked back to the house and into the living room to find Katsuhito kneeled behind the TV, randomly tugging on wires while Sasami stood by watching in concern.
"Hey, what's up?" Ryoko asked.
"Oh, the television wasn't working when I turned it on," Sasami replied, baffled. She didn't have much experience when it came to malfunctioning devices; Jurian technology having long since advanced past the random malfunction stage. Even the earth equipment she'd been around thus far had worked perfectly.
Katsuhito didn't know a coaxial cable from a power cord, his expertise being with spiritual matters and such, but when Sasami looked up at him with big, innocent eyes and asked him why the TV wasn't working, he had little choice. So now he did his best to mimic the things he'd always seen his son-in-law do in situations like this, giving it the same devotion to detail and appropriate reverence he reserved for all important rituals.
The three girls watched in mystification as the old man frowned, pulled out plugs, blew on them, replaced them, tried the controls, frowned some more, scratched his chin, hmmed to himself, switched plugs around, tried it again, switched them back, cursed under his breath, and finally stalked off for a stiff drink and some deep thought on the Zen of electronics repair.
As planned, none of them asked any questions or tried to stop him, afraid as they were to disturb his apparent bad mood. He concealed a faint smile of triumph; apparently Nobuyuki was wiser in the ways of women than he'd ever given him credit. Katsuhito wondered how many other situations this technique could be applied to.
"It must be bad," Ayeka said, to which the others all nodded seriously.
But, of course, there's always one.
"Well, lemme give it a shot," Ryoko volunteered. "I know a pretty good bit about electronics from all the times I hotwired ships." Without so much as a by your leave, she knelt and ran through a checklist of all the things that could be wrong.
The television itself seemed to be okay in that it would display picture, white static fuzz, anyway, and it also had the accompanying his of audio static. She stuck a handy tape into the VCR, which also worked, and the movie started playing accordingly. But whenever she tried to get an earth channel, all she got was static.
"Well," she said finally, "the TV is fine. We can't get the broadcast. It could be a broken cable or the receiver, but either way I can't fix it." She noticed Sasami's crestfallen look and thought furiously. "But... I think I can work around it. Ryo-Ohki!"
"Miyah?" replied the cabbit from where she had been watching on the couch.
Ryoko grinned at her. "Come on, Ryo-Ohki, we need your ears." She walked over and scooped the cabbit up, depositing her on top of the TV. "Now, we're waiting for a call from Kiyone an' Mihoshi, so I want you to keep an ear cocked for that, but Sasami wants to watch some earth TV, too. Think you could decode the signals?"
"Meyow." She looked down dubiously at the primitive box.
Ryoko leaned in close and whispered, "It's for Sasami. Pleeese?"
Appearing to come to a decision, the cabbit shrugged and nodded.
"Thanks, Ryo-Ohki. I'm sure you'll get a few extra carrots out of this." Ryoko pulled out the short coaxial cable from the VCR and pulled it up where it could be grasped in one little paw.
Ryo-Ohki's eyes lost their focus as she concentrated, occasionally flicking her ears.
"Can she really do that?" Ayeka asked.
"Yup! She's a cabbit, after all," Ryoko said as if that explained everything. "She receives almost every form of signal there is, continuously, and figuring out how to send it to the TV shouldn't be a problem for her at all. It wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that she watches soap operas non-stop."
"Miyah! Miyah!" she replied enthusiastically, and Ryoko facefaulted.
Sasami giggled. "I guess she does."
Ryoko struggled back to her feet. "She says that 'Days of our Lives' is the best."
Abruptly the TV speakers shrieked and the screen became a blinding collage of colors, startling everyone. Ryo-Ohki's nose twitched rhythmically as she adjusted her output to a signal the television would receive properly.
"Wow, Ryo-Ohki is really smart, isn't she?" Sasami enthused, scratching the little cabbit between her ears.
Ryo-Ohki miyahed in agreement, soaking in the praise. Coincidently enough, the picture blurred, becoming pink-tinted and full of static.
Sasami backed away to look at the change in sound. "Ano, I think you lost it again," she told the furry antenna.
"Miyah..." Ryo-Ohki growled in exasperation. She didn't work well with the low-level radiation waves the Earthlings employed to transmit data, and this was rapidly becoming a headache. She swiveled her ears slightly, hunting for the best reception.
One of the great mysteries of life, and one of the most important ones asked since the invention of electronic broadcast units throughout the universe, is why everyone in the immediate vicinity of someone attempting to adjust the reception on a receiver feels that it is simply impossible for anyone else to do it properly without their constant input.
"Try sitting up straighter."
"No, lay flat and raise just your ears. That should do it."
"Maybe if you turned sideways?"
"Cup your ears slightly, and bend the left one down. No, your other left. MY left. Yeah, that's it, just a little more... Darn! Lost it!"
"No no no, stick your left one out, raise your right paw, and wiggle your nose."
"That'll never work. I'm telling you, she needs to bend that left ear, but swivel her right. We almost had it."
"Oh, and I suppose you're an expert on cabbit reception now?"
"I've only been with Ryo-Ohki all my life, PRINCESS, I would think I would know a little something about her by now!"
"With the way you carry on, I'm surprised you even know what she is!"
"Why you snooty little bitch!" Ryoko pushed up her sleeves on each arm and got in Ayeka's face.
Ayeka didn't even flinch. "Uneducated cretin," she said matter of factly.
*slap*
Ayeka's face was turned to the side from the force of the blow, yet the rest of her body remained locked in place. Slowly, she turned back to face her opponent, who was staring at her hand with a shocked expression. "Care to try that again?"
"..." Ryoko replied, horrified at what she had just done.
"No, really. I won't even move. Do it again," Ayeka dared.
"But I'm-YEARRG!"
Ayeka dropped her fighting stance for the one she was in when Ryoko had slapped her, bringing her hand back from where she had pinched and twisted Ryoko's left nipple.
Ryoko stepped back, her arms crossed over her breasts protectively, her face squinched up in pain. She looked up at the princess, eyes alight in fury. "You want this? You want this?"
*POW*
Ayeka sat down heavily. That wasn't a slap, that had been a punch that caught her full on the mouth. She shook her head to clear away the cobwebs and raised one hand to her throbbing lip and sore jaw, using only one hand to assist her rise to her feet. Her finger came away bloody, a fact she duly noted when she held it back to check. She brought it back to her mouth and licked it removing all traces of blood. Then, much to Ryoko's horror, she smiled at the pirate, an unholy light coming to her eyes.
And launched herself at the taller woman.
"Here, Ryo-Ohki, have a carrot," Sasami said, having carefully navigated the active battleground to bring the cabbit's reward.
"Miyah!" *crunch* It wasn't all bad, she supposed, munching on a carrot and watching the princess and the pirate Eskimo wrestle each other. At least she got her entertainment out of it too.
Several minutes later, after a hasty recover, the two GP officers had a plan.
Going back for her uniform was out of the question. It would take far too long, and the perpetrator would have that much extra time to hide. They had to go for it now.
Kiyone gave her equipment a final check. They only had the one capture field generator, a fat cylinder about three feet long and a foot thick with two extensible handles and a diamond shaped bulge on the end of the 'barrel', so she had grabbed it herself, hooking its carrying strap over her shoulder. Complimenting that was her standard issue GP handblaster and control cube, making her one of the best armed people on the Earth. If she couldn't have armor, she could have weapons. She did have some protection, however, as she had slung a GP firefight shield over her back in case she was ever in a position to use it; the CFG took both hands to use. None of that took very long, and she spent the rest of her prep time hooking up both her partner's and her own climbing harness.
Due to the extremely thick forest growth, they couldn't set down or teleport, so they'd have to descend on a cable from Yagami's airlock.
Mihoshi had already been suited up, and she also had her gun, but it took her nearly twenty minutes to properly configure the portable life form scanner to distinguish between the suspect and the alien flora and fauna. Unfortunately, the portable unit didn't have the sophistication of Yagami's instruments and she had to do it all by hand. It was good thing that Mihoshi excelled at mindless repetitive tasks.
Once finished with her final checks, Kiyone returned to the bridge to find her partner on her knees, begging for someone to save her life.
"Please, oh please! The big icky monster has me cornered right now, threatening me with its big, sharp teeth and preparing to rend me limb from limb! Tenchi! HELP ME! Wah, I'm scared!" she bawled, clasping her hands together, tears streaming down her face. "Ryoko? Ayeka? Are you there? Hurry, or you may be too late! Wahhhh-" Off camera, she abruptly stabbed her finger down on a button.
"Mihoshi! What in the nine levels of Bureaucracy are you doing?"
Mihoshi turned to her partner, the tears instantly drying on her face. "Oh, I'm recording a desperate plea for help to send to Ryo-Ohki in case we get in trouble and need backup. It's set to send if we don't check back to Yagami once every hour."
Kiyone blinked. "But why were you pleading for your life?"
Mihoshi gave her a frank look. "So they'll hurry, of course!"
Kiyone shook her head. "I had no idea you were so good at acting."
Mihoshi smiled vapidly and shrugged. "I was one with the moment," she replied simply.
"Mihoshi, let's go."
Gear was grabbed, lines were tied, and Yagami dropped down to within ten meters of the treetops, less than three hundred from the position indicated by the blinking light on Mihoshi's flat square detector screen.
"Get ready..." Kiyone warned as the ship darted into position, the line gripped tightly in one hand and wrapped around her waist.
"Ready!" Mihoshi replied.
"GO!" Kiyone yelled, opening the door and diving through in one smooth motion.
Mihoshi was right behind her, keeping an eye on both the screen and the rapidly approaching treetops, letting the pre- programmed instructions in the line winch slow their descent as they got closer.
Kiyone was first down, her hand blaster drawn in one hand and the end of the line held in the other. She landed close to the trunk on a particularly wide limb, keeping hold on the line as she steadied herself with the same hand.
Mihoshi landed next, even more gracefully as she simply swung onto a fork that allowed her to stand unaided, far enough back from the trunk that she had a better view down.
"Well?" Kiyone hissed, eyes darting around. The trees they were in were on the bank of a large river, just up from a large waterfall hissing in the distance. According to Mihoshi's coordinates, the alien being was in the river itself, a lucky break since they would be hard pressed to spot it in the dense foliage that surrounded them.
"No change-uh oh. Change. BIG change! Fast!" she exclaimed, clipping the line to her belt and letting go so she could draw her own blaster in her hand.
"Running to us or away?! Dammit, Mihoshi, directions! I need directions!" Kiyone insisted, scanning the rapidly flowing river.
"Toward! It knows we're here!" Mihoshi replied, fear entering her voice. "It's too fast! One hundred meters!" She turned to face the direction it was coming from. "Seventy! Fifty! Fourtythirtytwentytenit'scomingrightforus!" She screamed.
A twelve-foot streak of pale white and dark green rocketed up through the limbs, sending wood splinters flying.
Two shots spanged out from their blasters, far too late to intercept the speeding creature as it shot by Kiyone. An unknown appendage caught under her outstretched arm, knocking it up and sending the blaster flying, causing her to reel backwards off the branch, frantically grasping at the safety line.
Which no longer offered support, severed as it was by the being jumping from her perch to the line over Mihoshi's head. Kiyone fell head first toward the bank of the river below, but first she had a few dozen limbs to go through.
Mihoshi snapped off another shot, but missed as she was jerked off the branch from the impact on the line above her. For one sickening moment she dangled, a couple hundred kilos of sinewy alien monster on the line between her and the airlock above.
It turned to look at her, a cold light burning in its bright, solid yellow eyes. She saw a mouth full of long, sharp teeth curled back in an inhuman grin and an unknown number of mottled limbs curled around to grasp the safety line.
And then it swarmed upwards, not even sparing a backward glance as the severed end of the line slithered through its feet, sending Mihoshi on a long fall after her partner. First things first, however. Mihoshi aimed carefully, bringing both hands to the grip of the pistol and squeezing off one final shot.
The bright yellow bolt streaked by the monster at a shallow angle, far outpacing it in the race to the airlock. Mihoshi's shot severed the safety line at the airlock, smashing several electronic panels in the process.
Yagami, sensing the attack, closed the airlock doors as programmed, cutting off Kiyone's dangling line and removing the alien's last possible route to the ship. The GP cruiser then darted back upwards, not stopping until it reached low Earth orbit.
About that time Kiyone hit her second limb, accidentally biting deep into her tongue as she flailed to catch herself. Unfortunately, she was hampered severely by the bulky CFG and slid by painfully, on to the next. She soon lost both count and consciousness, never even noticing when an errant limb snagged the strap on the CFG and left it dangling as she bounced to the ground.
Mihoshi landed on her back on the limb below her with an 'ouch', hanging there for a moment as coils of line fell around her. Slowly, awkwardly, she rolled sideways and slipped toward the rushing water below. Her frantic efforts to stop her fall were not in vain though, as she promptly wrapped the line around her, barrel rolling to the end of the slack and getting hopelessly tangled. She hung there with her eyes spinning madly, disoriented from the wild fall.
A series of sharp cracks and moans above brought her back to reality. "Oooh... My head..." she complained, rubbing the back of her skull with one free hand as she looked around. The first thing she noticed was the complete lack of items in her hands. That was cool, no cause for alarm yet. The next thing she noticed was the large alien monster straddling the limb she dangled from, an expression of pure agony on its twisted, inhuman features. This was rather more cause for alarm.
Slowly, it fell sideways until it dangled from the limb just above her, hanging by four different arms and letting its legs slip free. A groan slipped past a truly ferocious grimace, and Mihoshi felt the need to say something.
"Umm, Mr. Monster?" she began hesitantly. "Are you alright?"
It jerked at the sound, one yellow eye popping open and swiveling wildly until it focused on her. It narrowed in what was definitely an annoyed glare, the other eye opening to match it.
"Well, I, uh, didn't mean to make you fall, you see," she said, poking her fingers together and glancing down. "But, uh, as a Galaxy Policeperson I couldn't just let you steal our ship, but then again you might not have been going to _steal_ it, but anyway I'm very very sorry to have made you fall like that..."
*huff* it huffed, although what it was trying to convey wasn't clear. Its two upper arms let go and crossed over its elongated torso; apparently it was willing to wait for an explanation.
"Oh, yeah!" Mihoshi exclaimed. "In all the excitement I forgot to read you're your rights and the charges. Ahem. You have the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you do not have one one will be provided to you by the court. You are hear by charged with attacking a Galaxy Police vessel with a low yield antimatter weapon, which is a misdemeanor according to GP regulation number 638766-7625 section... Nine, I think." She leveled an accusing glare at it. "That paint job is practically new, you nearly smudged it!"
It blinked.
"Oh, yeah, and you are also charged with entering the restricted area of the Earth system, an off limits 'natural evolution' preserve of the Empire of Jurai. This is a felony violation and you will face additional charges in Jurian court. Let's not forget the criminal assault on two Galaxy Policepersons and the attempted theft of their vessel, unless you can give me some mitigating circumstances."
One wickedly clawed hand reached up and scratched its chin, then stretched out casually and held two claws scissor-like against the safety line. It grinned at her, displaying more dagger like teeth than Mihoshi cared to count, and raised one hairless eye ridge at her questioningly
Mihoshi looked down. Naught but empty air and a few thin bundles of leaves separated her from the rapids below. She looked back up, eyes wide and frightened. "Okay, why don't we just forget about the assault charges?"
*snip*
Mihoshi jerked downward, sliding about a foot as she franticly grabbed at all the coils within reach. "Waah!"
*snip*
Mihoshi bawled uncontrollably now, tears streaming down her face as the freed line snaked around the branch, dropping her even lower. "Please don't, Mr. Monster! Killing a GP officer is a high felony offense, punishable by-"
The monster gave her another delighted grin and cut the second to last remaining support.
This was a slack one, however, and she remained where she was. Now, though, only a single loop of line held her to the branch.
"Punishable by, by..."
*snip*
"Byyiee..." Mihoshi's dwindling scream stopped with a sharp splash. The last thing she saw as she fell was the monster waving at her with one hand.
Kiyone noted her partner's disappearance blearily, rubbing at her sore head. She sat on the soggy ground that broke her fall, dazed and confused.
Then the sounds of several more limbs breaking above her brought her back to the situation at hand. It was time to go.
A pair of comfortable, feminine shoes were kicked off and discarded immediately, their hard, flat heels, though low, were not suited for jungle travel. Kiyone's feet were tough and nimble; perfectly suited for a high-speed sprint through the jungle.
This was very similar to one of the GP officer's training programs, and by following remembered tricks Kiyone was able to make excellent speed in the harsh terrain. Barely a twig was crushed or a leaf left swaying in the breeze, such was the stealth of her passage. A hunting leopard could hardly do better, and the alien beast-thing was left far behind her.
Part of the reason for that was that it had stopped to chew curiously on the CFG and eat a luckless tree sloth, but her passage was no less swift for all that.
Blood pounded in her ears and the throbbing lump on her head, and occasionally she was forced to crash headlong through tangles of brush and vines, but Kiyone's instincts were true. She laid several false trails, doubling back repeatedly, running backwards, splashing through the numerous small streams; every trick she knew of to throw off her pursuer.
Several miles back, the huge hexapod burped out a tuft of sloth fur and settled back comfortably against a mossy tree trunk for a siesta. Out of the prison for only a day and it had already had to drive off an assault. If it was going to deal effectively with the various threats it had already encountered, a nap was probably a good idea.
Finally, she staggered to a halt and collapsed breathlessly on a grassy spot of ground, a little more than one hour and five miles away. Automatically, she reached for her earring, intending to summon Yagami and get the hell out of here, or at least get help. Ryoko could probably match the perpetrator on its own ground, but she wasn't able to.
She didn't actually expect it to be there, and wasn't surprised to learn that it, too, had been lost in the flight. The E-Z Remove feature had always been those thing's weakest point. Irritatedly, she brushed at an itch on the back of her neck.
A sudden memory flashed in her mind: Two young women with dirt smears all over them, wrestling with a sink drainpipe.
Her heart sank at the hopelessness of the situation. There was simply no way that she and Mihoshi were going to be able to work their shift tomorrow, and there went yet another job. Kiyone let out a long, heartfelt sigh.
Everything had gone wrong for her from the start. Forgetting her uniform, that was a rookie mistake. Kiyone had long since thought she had moved on to the veteran's mistakes; apparently she was in some sort of transition stage. Encountering yet another ridiculously powerful criminal on this primitive planet that wasn't even listed on most maps, now that was just bad luck. She seemed to have a lot of that kind. Getting knocked off one limb and hitting the rest on the way, incidentally losing her gear in the process, well, that was another example of bad luck. Watching her partner fall to her probable demise in the surging currents of an alien planet...
Kiyone brightened. "Well, I guess it's not all bad," she said aloud, and was startled when a flock of birds burst from cover a few yards away. Realizing what she had said and why, her mood darkened once more.
What kind of monster does it take to be happy at her partner's death? Mihoshi was probably her best friend, and certainly the only one who had never intentionally stabbed her in the back.
Although, there were doubts about one time. Kiyone couldn't imagine how she had missed noticing a giant venomous newt-spider crawling around on her back, and Mihoshi never did manage to produce evidence, but she was probably telling the truth. Her tendency to tell the truth was her most annoying personality quirk, even worse than leaving the toilet seat up.
"Ugh," she said and shuddered, the skin on her back crawling at the very thought of having a newt-spider on her. A convenient stick served to scratch the imaginary itches even as she continued to berate herself.
Mihoshi was a good GP officer, even if she did manage to get herself, and Kiyone, demoted as fast as they were promoted. She was a devoted friend, incurably honest, and possessed of an unshakable set of morals. Just because she was also mind bogglingly annoying at times didn't mean she should be happy she was gone. Kiyone made a mental note to do something nice for her the next time she saw her.
It was almost definitely too good to be true, anyway.
Rest break over, all hopes of immediate rescue dashed, Kiyone hopped up and set about the simple mechanics of staying alive.
She never noticed the six-inch eight-legged horror that ran for cover as she got up, having been so recently evicted from its temporary mobile home.
First, more distance was needed between her and the monster. She had seen how fast it moved, so her only hope was to get lost in the biological wonderland that made up the local flora and fauna. Kiyone set off at her most stealthy pace, gauging her remaining daylight with a worried eye.
Unlike her previous mad dash, this one was less energy intensive, affording her the time to actually look at her surroundings and hopefully avoid the odd Earth predator as well.
Brightly colored birds of all shapes and hues flitted to and fro in the branches, their calls and whistles mixing with the calls of even more, stranger animals. No two trees were alike it seemed, and fascinating animals of all sorts scaled their bark skins. Once she caught a glimpse of a large humanoid creature sitting on a branch, but her path carried her elsewhere. Perhaps less appealing, strange squishy creatures were flattened beneath her toes, with the odd crunch just to break the monotony.
Kiyone was startled at the diversity. It was one thing to see the listings on the scanners, a whole other to experience it firsthand. By contrast, even the wildest of the planets she had been on were about as biologically diverse as a large garden. Of course, Earth _had_ been set aside as a 'Natural Evolution Preserve'. It was supposed to have diversity such as this.
The paths she followed were generally bare and slightly slimy, the dirt dampened almost to the point of mud by the frequent rains the area received. Other than the occasional hard-shelled insect, the ground was almost perfect for barefoot travel. Her prints would likely be trampled on and churned to the point of obscurity by the other animals on the trails, and there were few sharp objects to pierce her feet and slow her down. She was stealthy and silent as she ran, just another predator/prey relationship playing itself out in the ancient jungle.
Of course, it being a busy jungle, with lots of other animals living out their day-to-day lives beneath and in its canopy, it was inevitable that she would run into another such struggle running concurrently.
"YEEK YEEK!"
"AHHH! GET AWAY FROM ME!"
"ROWL!"
"YEEK!"
"AHHH!"
"I'm home!" Nobuyuki called as he walked in the door with his jacket over his shoulder. He loosened his tie with one hand as he slipped his shoes off, smiling when he heard several welcoming calls coming from different parts of the house. He would miss the girls when they were gone. They made the big house feel alive.
He deposited his briefcase on a table and walked to the living room. He could already hear the television on.
Inside the living room, Sasami looked over the back of the couch as Nobuyuki walked in. "How was your day, Mr. Masaki?"
"Oh, good, good," he replied dismissively, then gestured at the TV. "What's with Ryo-Ohki?"
Sasami giggled. "The receiver stopped working, so Ryo-Ohki took its place. We even get more channels now."
Ryo-Ohki took a large bite of a carrot lying beside her, causing the image to blur and become orange tinted.
Nobuyuki chuckled. "I've stayed in a lot of hotels, but this is the first time I've ever seen a carrot operated television. I'll have a look at the dish after I change clothes." He paused. "Have you seen Tenchi?"
Sasami nodded. "Yep, he's talking to my sister and Ryoko right now." Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper and she leaned closer.
Instinctively, Nobuyuki leaned down as well.
"Ayeka and Ryoko had a fight earlier today," she said solemnly, as if it was a statement of great importance.
Nobuyuki laughed. "Oh, is that all? They used to fight all the time. The house is still standing, so I guess it wasn't too bad."
Sasami shook her head. "They got into a _fight_. No powers."
Nobuyuki raised an eyebrow. "Are they still mad?"
Again, Sasami shook her head, sending her long tresses bouncing. "That was the weird part. They weren't mad. My sister laughed the whole time. It was very strange."
"Hey, Dad. How was work?" Tenchi asked as he entered the room.
"Same old," he replied noncommittally, looking up.
Both Ayeka and Ryoko had followed Tenchi in, and they drew Nobuyuki's eye. Ayeka walked along in the position she had favored ever since the whole mess had started, clinging lightly to one of Tenchi's arms, in this case the left. Ryoko, on the other hand, clearly wanted to be closer to Tenchi, but every time she did Ayeka would glance in her direction and Ryoko would skitter back nervously. Of further interest was that Ryoko sported a dark bruise over one eye and a series of shallow scratches across her cheek. Ayeka's lower lip was so swollen that it looked almost like she'd been stung by a wasp, despite the wide grin she wore, and her hair was in a terrible disarray.
"Hello," Ayeka greeted, and bowed lightly.
"Yeah, um, hi," Ryoko spared him a perfunctory glance before resuming her watchful gaze at Ayeka.
"Miyah!" Ryo-Ohki said suddenly, startling everyone. She adjusted her output as they looked around, changing the image on the television screen.
Mihoshi's face popped up on a white screen, eyes wide and full of fear. "Ryoko! Ayeka! We've got a situation here! Neither I nor Kiyone can reach the ship, and we need backup now!" Her voice got even higher with panic. "Please, oh please! The big icky monster has me cornered right now, threatening me with its big, sharp teeth and preparing to rend me limb from limb! Tenchi! HELP ME! Wah, I'm scared!" she bawled, clasping her hands together, tears streaming down her face. "Ryoko? Ayeka? Are you there? Hurry, or you may be too late! Wahhhh-" The transmission cut off with an air of finality that didn't bode well for the hapless detective.
"Oh, no!" Sasami cried, even as the others blinked at the TV in astonishment. "You've got to go save them!"
"Right!" everyone agreed.
"Ryo-Ohki! Get off there and let's go!" Ryoko barked.
"I'm coming too!" Tenchi added, as neither of the two girls seemed to be paying him much attention. He suppressed a flash of anger as they conferred for a few seconds, probably about his safety, but was gratified when they nodded.
Ryo-Ohki jumped straight up and phased through the rest of the house, transforming into her crystalline ship form as soon as she was clear.
Ryoko grabbed both Tenchi and Ayeka, instantly teleporting them into Ryo-Ohki. The cabbit shot away into the sky without another word.
They found Yagami orbiting pilotless above central Africa, a fact Ryoko noted when she teleported over to check. The ship's log was uninformative; showing only that it had closed both airlocks and rose to a height of seven miles when it detected shots fired at the airlock.
Ryoko teleported back over with a worried expression and gave Ryo-Ohki the coordinates for where Kiyone and Mihoshi had exited Yagami.
Ryo-Ohki paused just above the treetops, much as Yagami had previously, but this time only Ryoko emerged, teleporting around quickly as she searched for clues. She quickly spotted the coils of safety line, the scuffmarks on the limbs, and an intact GP blaster, which she recognized as Kiyone's. She also found a scattering of electronic parts which she didn't recognize, but did see parts of the GP emblem on some of the shards. A pair of sensible shoes was also lying at the base of a large tree, but Ryoko left them where they were.
Of Kiyone and Mihoshi themselves, and the being that attacked them, the only sign was a set of barefoot prints which Ryoko followed for a short distance and lost in the jungle vegetation.
She returned to her ship even more worried.
"Did you find anything?" Tenchi asked.
"Not enough." She handed Kiyone's blaster to him. "At least one of them was able to get away, but I lost her trail. We'll have to search in Ryo-Ohki."
"Can she find them?" Ayeka asked, equally worried.
"I'm not sure," Ryoko admitted. "But there's only one way to find out."
As it turned out, Ryo-Ohki was unable to spot either of the two detectives for the same reason Yagami's sensors couldn't pick out the alien. There were too many different animals in the jungle, and they all seemed to belong to a different species.
They tried a search pattern along the river, visually looking for either of them, but again were unable to find them. Both, if alive, were probably in hiding, making it that much more difficult to find them.
Finally, late that night, weary and worried, they called for a break in the search. Tenchi had school, and wasn't really needed. Ryo-Ohki flew back to Japan, and Tenchi grimly looked forward to hurrying off to school as soon as he got back. Ryoko and Ayeka would return and search in shifts as soon as they could.
If they had only continued searching that night, they might have spotted the unusual sight of three different figures in the leafless top of an unusually tall tree, illuminated by the bright moonlight and surrounded by a dense cloud of blood-sucking insects.
Kiyone glared at the occupant of the third painfully slender tree branch from her perch between the first and second, nursing her injured hand where it had been bitten, either by the leopard or the thrice damned monkey she wasn't sure. From time to time she would wave furiously at the bugs.
Farther down below, the leopard crouched patiently on the smallest limb that would support it and stared up hungrily at the two tender morsels that should have been its supper, occasionally licking its tail where it had been bitten, either by the monkey or the human it wasn't sure. Every now and then it would twitch its ears when the carpet of mosquitoes that covered them became too much to bear.
The monkey hung onto the top of the thin branch with three limbs, cradling its arm where it had been scratched, either by the leopard or the human, and responded to the glare by throwing its own excrement at the one whom it suspected was responsible. It, too, scratched at bug bites in its fur.
"Hey! Knock it off you little bastard!" Kiyone protested, taking a half-hearted swipe at the monkey before grimacing and wiping the filth off. She flicked it aside, unable to choose between the monkey and the leopard as targets.
"Yeek yeek," it gibbered, swinging out of reach.
The leopard just grumbled deep in its throat and lay its head back down.
Kiyone slapped at another one of several thousand mosquitoes and tried to relax her aching muscles. She had been hanging there for several hours now, and it was beginning to tire her out. She looked around for the seventy-third time, trying to figure out how to secure herself to the tree while she slept since she was definitely going to be spending the night here.
The three branches were green and flexible, swaying whenever she or the monkey moved, and they sprouted from a single junction a few feet up from the leopard. Suddenly, she hit upon the perfect solution to her dilemma.
Squirming and holding on with only her legs, she was able to remove her shirt and bra, which she knotted around her neck. This left her topless, but now she had building materials.
The branches each angled slightly away from each other, making the second phase of her plan difficult. Still, Kiyone picked the likeliest of the pair and began her climb, poking her skirt clad rear out behind herself as far as possible, trying her best to bend it toward the other one.
The bark was smooth and difficult to grip under the best of circumstances, and as tired as she was, not to mention in the dim light, it wasn't the best of circumstances. Despite her best efforts, her fingers and toes slipped around just a little, sending her on a gentle, arching course over to the third limb; the one with the monkey.
"Yeek!" it protested, startled by her strange antics.
"Yeek!" she agreed, feeling several small shivers in the wood that indicated some of the fibers had separated. After a few sickening moments of swaying back and forth violently, the motion slowed, as did her heart rate. Chuckling nervously, she gave a wry grin to the monkey, now only about three feet away. "So," she began, mostly just to talk. "Hang around here much?"
A blob of something foul struck her just under the left eye and stuck there for a few seconds before sliding slowly down her cheek.
Kiyone sighed and wiped it off. "Happens every time," she grumbled to herself. "You try to make some nice small talk and they always bring politics into it."
Being lighter than she, the monkey didn't have much trouble clambering higher until it was at the level where the end of her branch crossed the end of its own.
"Hey," Kiyone cooed, having just had a happy thought. "Could you swing me around to that other branch? Please?" she coaxed.
It cocked its head sideways at her, eeping softly.
"Pretty please?" she begged. "Look, I'm sorry about the arm, alright? You'd have done the same. In fact," she said, looking at her hand, "I think you did."
The monkey reached out with one hand and grabbed her limb, giving it a few experimental tugs, which caused her to sway again.
"Yes! That's it!" Kiyone cried, causing the leopard to look up. "Just push me around to the other limb. That's it, you can do it..."
The little simian braced itself with both its legs and its tail, grabbing her branch with both hands. Then, using all the strength in its wiry frame, it pulled hard.
"Nono!" Kiyone protested. "Bad monk-"
*CRACK*
"IEEE!" she cried, holding on for dear life as the green, living limb fractured in what is typically called a 'greenstick' break, and with good reason.
The fibers on the outer edge of the bend separated, letting it, and Kiyone, fall unimpeded. However, the fibers on the inside edge, and fortunately this was in a fairly thick section, held firm, causing her to arc in toward the trunk and sway back and forth like a pendulum, upside down.
Her cries and the monkey's laughter resounded throughout the jungle, stirring creatures for miles.
The leopard, meanwhile, sat up and batted at the oversize cat toy, making Kiyone even more nervous if such a thing was possible, even though she was well out of reach.
Gulping audibly, she collected her wits. Now she had to get back up to a safe limb, preferably without making any sudden movements that might break the last bit of wood keeping her from a long, long fall.
Kiyone considered all her options, then crossed off swinging around and going up upright. It would probably prove to be too much for the limb to take. Ditto swinging and grabbing onto the trunk, especially since it would put her in reach of the big cat.
No help for it. With nothing in front of her but a leaf- stripped end and a gaping void, she carefully, oh so carefully, began to slide backwards up the tree.
Once close to the still solid portion of the limb, she was able to grab it and turn herself around without much difficulty, making it the easiest part of the task so far. Once steady again, she regrouped and considered another option.
Her last remaining branch was a bad choice; it simply leaned too far out. The monkey's, on the other hand...
As quickly as she could, she shimmied back up her limb until she was the same height as her fellow prey. "Hey, monkey- boy," she said unnecessarily. "Get down from there. I need your branch." Seeing it just stare at her, which she expected, she wrapped a leg around behind the limb and whipped her shirt off from around her neck. A few deft wraps around one hand and a few flips to twist it properly turned it into a decent weapon that gave her the extra reach she needed.
*crack* *snap*
"EEP! YEEK EEK EEK!" The monkey scrambled around, trying to evade the deadly accurate blows. Finding its way up blocked by a rapid series of snaps, it quickly climbed down the tree, which was the plan all along.
Kiyone just snickered, finally getting some of her own back. Although she didn't mention it often, she was known as the Queen back when she was just another trainee in the Galaxy Police boot camp showers. Even the toughened graduates who regularly hazed the recruits gave her a wide berth.
Finally managing to get on the proper branch above the monkey, she lost little more time in bending it over to the other one. The bra went around both and was tied off in a triple secure knot that she doubted even the damned monkey could untie or bite through. Now she had a secure frame to work with, formed by the arch of the two branches.
Unfortunately, she still didn't have enough material. So the skirt was added to the supply of cloth her shirt provided. Then, making a few careful rips, twists, and knots, she was able to fashion herself a short, narrow hammock and hang it between the now shortened space between the two branches.
Kiyone grinned in accomplishment as she eased her weary body into place. It wasn't the best bed she'd ever had; her lower legs dangled over the side, her head lay on a particularly large knot, and she didn't even want to think about what she was going to feel like in the morning, but after hours of running through the woods, climbing trees, and holding on for dear life, it felt like heaven.
Then it started raining.
Not long after that, the wind picked up.
And some time after that, the monkey bit her toe.
Miles away, nestled in a hollow on the ground, protected by the tough, insulated material of her uniform and a small bottle of GP insect repellant, Mihoshi slept like a baby.
As Kiyone would say, 'There ain't no justice.'
To be concluded in part c...