Part One
The Time-Space-and-the-Other Machine



	It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly, a shot rang out! The maid 
screamed. Suddenly, a pirate ship appeared on the horizon!


	Meanwhile, at the Masaki household, Tenchi and the girls were facing 
their worst challenge yet: home movies.


	"You're going to love these, " Masaki Nobuyuki proclaimed, staggering  
in under a load of videotapes, film reels, and a movie projector. He set 
them down with a thud.

	"Oh? What are they?" Ryohko asked, picking up a reel of film. She held 
it up to the light and phased the portion of her face containing her eyes 
through the metal and celluloid. "Oh, look!" she said. "It's a lot of 
little pictures of the time we had the water fight in the onsen and Aeka 
freaked when her towel fell off!"

	"Oh," Nobuyuki said. "Heh-heh... wrong reel." He took it from Ryohko and 
went to exchange it for another film reel.

	Aeka had been slowly turning purple during this. Now she exploded. "That 
-- that -- that *commoner* was taking films of me bathing!? How *dare* 
HE!"

	"What's the matter?" Ryohko asked. "Embarrassed now that someone knows 
you don't look like much with no clothes to cover you?"

	"Why -- Ryohko, you bristlehare! Just because I have a proper maidenly 
modesty -- which you wouldn't understand, being quite as wanton as a 
bristlehare, if not more so..."

	"Wanton? I'd rather be whatever that is than a tight-ass like you."

	"Oooooh..."

	"I wonder what's keeping Mihoshi," Tenchi said.

	"She and her partner have a lot to catch up on," Sasami pointed out. 
"Wasn't it nice of Mommy to take Mihoshi's old shuttle back for an 
upgrade?"

	"Uh... yes," Tenchi said, thinking of the box Kiyone had brought along 
for them, now stowed in the shed. The exterior was decorated with cute 
marmots and fluffcats, and apparently in deference to Earth sensibilities 
Misaki had added a yellow chick and the words 'piyo piyo' that could have 
been lifted directly from Otonashi-kanrinin's apron.

	As for the contents... whatever had possessed her to send a daisy chain 
through the mail? Not to mention...

	"Got it!" Nobuyuki announced, coming back with a videotape instead. 
"This is Tenchi's school play when he was eight."

	"Oh, what was it?" Aeka asked.

	"Attack of the Evil Space Princess from Planet Jiraki," Tenchi answered. 
"One of the teachers wrote it. I was one of the Clumsy Zucchinis."

	"This I gotta see," Ryohko said.

	So they did. They watched Tenchi's school play when he was nine, "The 
Lady With the Feather Robe." They watched his plays at ages ten, eleven, 
and twelve, "Super Pepsi and the Kid Go To Mars" (in which he reprised 
his role as a Clumsy Zucchini), "The Demon of the Rashoumon" (which Aeka 
loved), and "Threat of the Static Klingons," respectively. In between, 
they watched Tenchi at the zoo, Tenchi at the school picnic, a very 
abridged portion of "All the people that go in and out of Tokyo 
Disneyland in the morning," and some other ones that Nobuyuki proudly 
announced he had copied from film reel to videocassette, much as he had 
copied all his reel-to-reel audio tapes onto CD.

	After "Threat of the Static Klingons" was over and everyone had gotten 
their breath back, Washuu announced it was time for her chat room and 
left.

	Nobuyuki took one look at his watch, muttered "Shimatta!" and announced 
he had to hurry if he was going to catch the train back to Tokyo. He 
suggested that Tenchi set up the filmreels and start showing those, and 
hurried out to catch the last bus into town.

	While he was on the bus, he began reminiscing about the days when he had 
made the film reels that Tenchi would even now be showing. High school. 
The way Achika, whom he was later to marry, had smiled as she jumped down 
from this very bus in the afternoons. The way she giggled when he did 
something so simple as cough... and how he had blushed then! The 
principal's beginning-of-school-year addresses; by his senior year he 
could have recited the whole thing word-for-word. There had been a new 
teacher that year... funny, he couldn't remember anything about her. And 
two transfer students that had abruptly left after something; he 
distinctly remembered how the second of them had sauntered into the room 
with an arrogant step, as if to say that she was totally in control of 
her life, but he could remember nothing else about her or the other one. 
Perhaps his mind was overtired?

	Or, more likely, it was the fault of all that drinking, those horrible 
months after Achika had died. He'd been in the bars every spare hour and 
some of the ones that weren't. You don't find answers in the bottom of a 
sake cup, but he had found some measure of oblivion... until Achika's 
father had dragged him out by the pigtail and thrown him in the pond with 
the tree.

	"You shame your father!" Masaki Katsuhito had yelled as he knocked a 
blinking, wet, and dazed Nobuyuki back into the pool. "And your mother!" 
Another punch, as Nobuyuki'd stood up once more. "And your widowed 
auntie!" Kick, as Nobuyuki'd tried to charge his father-in-law. "And your 
sister!" High kick, spinning him around. "You shame Achika!" Backhand 
across the cheek. Nobuyuki had actually managed to land a punch somewhere 
on Katsuhito.

	"And, worst of all, you shame your son! Tenchi's losing his father as 
well as his mother, and from what I see of you it's just as well!"

	After that, they'd had a splendid little fight. Somehow or other 
Nobuyuki's brain had cleared out, and he'd done his level best to strike 
back at something physical that could be hit.

	Masaki-san had said afterwards, while rubbing a bruised cheekbone, "You 
have the raw talent... it's a shame you were never trained." Nobuyuki, 
one big bruise all over, had nodded and tried to pay attention to his 
son. What with that and the other diversions for his mind he'd found (of 
which all that could be said was that they were less obviously 
destructive to his own self and interfered much less with the attention 
he gave to Tenchi), it was no surprise that high school memories had 
faded so much.

	Then again, it might be that he had only bothered to keep the memories 
of Achika. Achika, walking along in the park, as autumn leaves fluttered 
in the wind and her black ponytail bounced...


	Achika, walking along in the park, as autumn leaves fluttered in the 
wind and her black ponytail bounced. Although technically 
black-and-white, the picture had a distinct yellowish cast.

	"8-millimeter camera?" Sasami asked.

	"Yes, it's a camera people can use to make their own movies," Tenchi 
answered. Sasami continued to look interested, so he went on. 

	"My father always used to love fooling around with the latest gizmos. 
This is a film he shot quite a long time ago."

	"Oh," all three girls said.

	"Well," Tenchi said as the camera zoomed in on Achika and she laughingly 
tried to wave it away, "it was a pretty sneaky way to pick up my mother, 
you must admit."

	"You mean to say that that girl we've been watching is your mother?" 
Aeka asked.

	"Yes," Tenchi said.

	"Wow, is she ever young," Ryohko said, comparing the film to her own 
memories.

	"Of course she is!" Tenchi yelled at her, irritated. "When Dad made this 
film, they were still in high school!"

	"Well, excu-u-use me."

	"She's so pretty... " Sasami said softly.

	"Of course she is. Tenchi-sama's mother is descended from the Imperial 
House of Jurai," Aeka put in.

	"That's weird," Ryohko said. "I thought you said you were of Imperial 
Jurai Blood."

	"What's *that* supposed to mean?" Aeka asked sweetly.

	"Well -- "

	Aeka moved the bowl of sembei out of the way as Ryohko tried to get one.


	"What are you doing!" Ryohko yelled. "Those are my sembei! Give them 
back!"

	"I won't waste them on the likes of you," Aeka answered.

	"But they're MY sembei!"

	Meanwhile, Tenchi and Sasami were watching the movie.

	"She looks very gentle," Sasami volunteered.

	"She was," Tenchi said.

	Suddenly Achika's image, which had apparently been talking to the 
cameraman, fuzzed and vanished from the film.

	"Huh?" Tenchi said. The house began to shake and the film reels fell out 
of the player and rolled across the floor, leaving their silver trails. 

	"My body's -- " he yelped as his hands began to dematerialize, followed 
by his arms and torso. He groaned as his half-dematerialized form began 
to shake and then was abruptly sucked up and away.

	It was just as abruptly stopped by a lattice of golden light that 
appeared in midair. Tenchi grunted as he, now solid again, struck the 
lattice firmly. He remained stuck to it, in an upside-down position.

	"Why'd you do that, Tenchi?" Ryohko said in puzzlement.

	"Tenchi-sama!" Aeka gasped, almost simultaneously.

	"Miyaa!" Ryoh-oh-ki contributed.

	"Tenchi-niichan..." Sasami whispered.

	"What are you doing up there?" Ryohko asked curiously.

	"Well, I was just in time somehow," Washuu said as she entered the room. 
"There's a problem in the past."

	The three girls gasped.

	"And here's the proof," she added, holding up a strip of film. "Look at 
this."

	The three girls looked at the filmstrip, which Washuu had retrieved from 
the reel lying on the floor. In it, Achika's image faded out from frame 
to frame.

	"She's not here... Tenchi-niichan's mother's disappeared!" Sasami said.

	"Yes," Aeka added, "here and here and here and here and even here!"

	"This tells you that the problem's in the past?" Sasami asked while Aeka 
was still pointing out instances of Achika's non-appearance.

	"Nope," Washuu said. "What told me is the recent wild jumps in the 
xchi-particle flow, the perturbations of Planck's Constant, 
Falmienzuteck's Theorem of Temporal Disturbance, integrals three, five, 
and seventeen of the Ford Prefect Usually Working Rules of About 
Everything... "

	"Stick to the 8-mm film," Ryohko broke in. "Washuu, what's going on?"

	Normally Washuu would have grimaced at her daughter's continued use of 
her name, but the situation was too serious for that.

	The three girls abruptly sucked in their breaths as the house began to 
crumble and sag into ruin.

	"Twenty-six years ago," Washuu said, examining the tiny screen of a 
hand-held terminal the size of a rather large stopwatch slaved to her 
main computer, "according to these fluxes, something terrible happened to 
Tenchi-dono's lady mother. As a result of this, the Masaki family died 
out."

	"Eh?" Tenchi said.

	"Tenchi-dono has never been born into this world."

	"But we're all still here," Ryohko pointed out.

	"Only one thing is able to save you from Unbeing; the number one genius 
scientist in the universe, this Washuu who stands before you."

	Everyone had slightly disgusted we-walked-into-that-one looks on their 
faces.

	"I was running the time-space-and-the-other chat room from my subspace 
laboratory," Washuu said, "when I detected a temporal misalignment. 
There's a sudden shift in the continuity of history, centering around the 
Masaki family, twenty-six years ago -- cutting it very fine, too. If we 
do nothing, it's not only Tenchi-dono's history that will change. Ours 
will, too."

	Everyone thought for a moment about what would have happened to them if 
Tenchi hadn't existed. It was *not* a comforting thought.

	"For now, " Washuu continued, "the shield I've put around Tenchi-dono is 
blocking the time axis, and therefore keeping all of you safe. But it was 
the best I could do on such short notice."

	"Then that means... " Aeka began.

	"Tenchi-niichan... " Sasami whispered.

	Tenchi produced a sound that was somewhere between a sigh and a very 
tired groan.

	"Don't joke with me!" Ryohko yelled.

	"But it's a fact," Washuu answered.

	"So then," Ryohko demanded, leaping across to glare down into Washuu's 
face. "What the HELL happened to Tenchi's mother?" 

	"I'm sorry, Ryohko," Washuu told her calmly, "but I have no idea."

	"So what can we do? Washuu!"

	"Please, Washuu-sama..." Aeka whispered, hardly sure of what she was 
asking.

	"Washuu-san!" Sasami added.

	"Well, there is only one way to help," Washuu began.

	"Tell us, Washuu-chan. What is it?" Tenchi begged.

	"Well, you'll begin by going back in time twenty-six years, and then the 
rest of the job is quite simple; make sure nothing happens to 
Tenchi-dono's lady mother."

	Aeka suddenly remembered something Washuu had said earlier. "What do you 
mean, 'cutting it rather fine'?" she asked.

	"Twenty-six years ago in *our* timeline, Tsunami swung by Earth and 
added about seventy wards to Earth's normal ones, setting them up around 
the Masaki bloodline and timeline. Whatever happened took place right 
before she'd have come by."

	"Oh. Of course Tsunami would have done that. How did you know she did 
so?"

	"She told me," Washuu answered with a 
why-do-people-bother-me-with-perfectly-obvious-questions look.

	"Why'd she put them up?" Tenchi asked from his upside-down position.

	"*She* didn't say... " Washuu said, a half-smile playing about her lips.



	Meanwhile, on board the *Un-no-fubuki*, Mihoshi had decided that she was 
too tired to join the others for home movies. It had been a busy day. 
After the aborted message had come through, Kiyone had spent *hours* 
trying to track down the source of the message (it had been routed 
through several somethings) and to get some response (nobody answered). 
Yukinojou, the *Un-no-fubuki*'s AI, had announced that one of the Chikyuu 
wards had slid out of its normal location and attached itself to the 
ship.

	"What's it doing there?" Kiyone had asked, irritated.

	Yukinojou had hooked itself into Mihoshi's cube (which Mihoshi had 
unearthed from the clutter) and then announced, "Protecting us from a 
temporal discontinuity."

 	Kiyone had gotten very excited about that, but Mihoshi hadn't 
understood what had her so on edge. The ship was fine, they were fine, 
there was no sign that that was about to change, and there were no 
criminals to arrest or children to protect, so what had her tail in a 
vise?

	Mihoshi finally gave up on trying to decide what Kiyone and Yukinojou 
were arguing about and set about the process of familiarizing herself 
with Chikyuujin (Terran) culture, via the next on a set of books that 
Tenchi's grandfather had recommended. They were very good books. There 
was a character like Tenchi-san, and one like Lady Aeka, and one like 
Ryohko, and one like Kiyone...

	Finally Kiyone had announced that they might as well go to bed. 
Mihoshi'd yawned, set *The Last Command* open face-down on the controls, 
and gone to change into her pajamas.


	Washuu went back into her lab and took a look at the status of the chat 
room. Washuu-chan dai'ichi (#1) had left in her absence, stating that 
"something had come up."

	"How rude of her," Washuu muttered. "She wouldn't even exist if it 
hadn't been for that meson-hadron cyclotron I hooked up separately for 
Ryohko."

	"Well, she is Ryohko's idea of what we're like," Washuu-chan dai'yon 
(#4) stated from her corner of the screen. "We seem to be having the same 
problem with a temporal misalignment in *this* universe."

	"Neither of the Terra-born universes seem to be having it -- " 
Washuu-chan dai'ni (#2) explained.

	"So I'm going to work with Washuu-chan dai'yon in a private channel, and 
my counterpart there will be available if you need to bounce ideas 
around, Washuu-chan Prime," Washuu-chan dai'san clarified.

	"My thoughts exactly, Washuu-chan," Washuu said.

	"As might be expected, Washuu-chan," the remaining three Washuus said 
before two of them winked out.

	The remaining (and only non-Washuu) member of Washuu-chan's Super 
Dimensional Chat Room coughed. "I have some experience with calibrating 
jumps in time and space," she said. "Not that you need my assistance, 
but... "

	"Every little bit is of use," Washuu told the lavender-haired girl. If 
nothing else, she could always help Washuu-chans #3 and #4.


	"Don't worry about money," Mihoshi yawned as she climbed into the futon 
(she'd managed to spill cola all over the instruction datahedron for the 
new modifications; as Kiyone had said, attempting to decipher how to 
extend the beds from the electronic gobbledygook on it, they really ought 
to make those things proof against weakish acid. Fortunately, the futon 
storage cabinet worked just the way it used to). "We can always get a 
part-time job tomorrow."

	"You'd better get to sleep," Kiyone told her, getting into her own 
futon. "We'll need an early start tomorrow." She looked over at her 
sworn-kin only to find that Mihoshi was already lost in slumberland.

	"Asleep already?" she questioned nobody in particular, moving one of 
Mihoshi's arms around to a more comfortable position and drawing the 
cover up. "At least that's one thing you've never had any trouble doing 
right." For a moment her conscience teased her with the memory of 
Mihoshi's personnel report "... prone to jumping to conclusions and 
acting before thinking, in an emergency this officer will do five wrong 
things that add up to the best possible outcome... " before subsiding in 
the face of Kiyone's long, LONG list of reasons why her partner was 
ruining her career.

	Kiyone lay down and put her arms behind her head, running over the 
events of the day. "I wonder what that signal was all about," she said 
thoughtfully, as the *Un-no-fubuki* vibrated in response to something. 
"It was really weird."

	The vibration, as if a ship had been docking to the *Un-no-fubuki*, 
stopped.

	"Good evening," Ryohko said, walking through the wall of the cabin.

	Kiyone sat up, shocked. It was a very different thing to hear about 
things and to actually see them. "Ryohko?" she managed in a creditable 
imitation of reasonable speech.

	"I've come to get you," Ryohko said urbanely.

	Kiyone squawked.


	The six of them (seven, if you count Ryoh-oh-ki) were each strapped into 
a *thing* attached to a spoke of a horizontal wheel that resembled 
nothing so much as one of those rides at a fair where you step into the 
little cubicle, the wheel spins faster and tilts at the same time until 
you are at right-angles to an upright position, but the combination of 
centripetal force and inertia keeps you flattened against the back.  
Either that or a very large salad shooter. This one only had six spokes 
and large gaps between, as it revolved slowly around Washuu, seated at 
the terminal.

	"Everyone ready?" Washuu asked. "Using the chronometric regulator 
attached to the photon-proton synchrotron Mark Three, I'll send you 
twenty-six years into the past. Of course, I generally don't use this for 
intra-universe travel, but stick to my instructions and you'll be fine.

	"I'm still compiling the data on what happened to Tenchi-dono's lady 
mother," she continued (actually Washuu-chan dai'ni was doing it, but why 
confuse them?) "It is imperative that Tenchi-dono not attempt to contact 
his mother once you arrive. The chances of inducing a temporal paradox 
are too high. Ryohko, you cannot afford to enter your astral sphere of 
influence."

	"I didn't extend it as far as Katsuhito's house until Tenchi was 
fourteen!" Ryohko snapped. "I was storing power."

	"I knew that," Washuu said. "You cannot go to the shrine, though, or you 
*will* cause a temporal paradox. You have that shield I designed embedded 
in your replacement gem?"

	"YES," Ryohko said as she spun past. "Are you sure this is gonna work?"

	"Nothing ventured, nothing gained, ne?" Aeka answered.

	"I'm really sorry to put you through all this," Tenchi apologized as the 
synchrotron began to pick up speed.

	"That's fine, but why do we *all* have to get involved?" Kiyone added.

	Mihoshi, whose spoke was next, had already fallen asleep again.

	"I'm growing really dizzy..." Sasami mentioned.

	"Anyway," Washuu said, "just be sure not to do anything stupid. If you 
throw history off more than it already is, I won't be able to control 
it."

	"Yeah, yeah, we heard it the first time," Ryohko said. 

	"You're the one I can trust least!" Washuu snapped.

	Her daughter made an akambe and stuck out her tongue.

	"Adding thiotimoline," Washuu said. "Acceleration beginning."

	"WHAT?" Aeka said, startled. Weren't they accelerating already?

	"You must be joking!" Tenchi seconded her.

	The synchrotron spun more quickly

	"Washuu, hold up!" Ryohko protested.

	"I'm going to be sick... " Sasami wailed.

	"Stop this, please!" Kiyone said, swallowing fiercely herself.

	"Here goes!" Washuu said gleefully, switching it into high gear.

	"AAAH!" everyone screamed as their internal organs started sending 
signals that they'd been left four meters behind. Blue lightning cascaded 
from the generators on the ceiling of that small corner of Washuu's lab. 
The machine spun faster, the lightning came down more thickly, and then 
there was a brief moment of blinding light... and following that, 
darkness.

	"Do you suppose they'll succeed?" Washuu-chan dai'ni said, the chat room 
being linked into the time-space-and-the-other controls.

	"It'd take a miracle," Washuu answered.

	Then both of them hastily explained the joke to the other member of the 
chat room.

	"And so," Tenchi said later, when Kiyone was recording his testimony to 
append to her report, "our journey back in time to save the future 
began."