Bastich of a Continuity Note: Put it this way. If you've seen every Tenchi Muyo! up to Episode #13, and if you've read every single Superman comic up to ACTION COMICS #773, then you're ACES, bruddah. If you watched Tenchi Universe, the Tokyo Show, or that Broadway musical where Superman lifts a set of bleachers, you might be in a little trouble. If you watched "Lois and Clark" could you PLEASE tell me why they couldn't slap some green makeup on Matt Frewer and put Brainiac on the show? I mean, Denise Crosby? Elizabeth Taylor? These are not VILLAINS. At least Doc Clay had a cool beard or SOMETHING.

Original Tenchi Muyo! concept by Masaki Kajishima and Hiroki Hayashi
Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster

"In plain English, Supes," Lobo bellowed. "That's my meal ticket in yer hands. Hand her over and maybe we'll just let ya off with a couple black eyes, OK?"

"I understand that, Lobo," Superman challenged, "but who's offering the reward? Detective Kuramitsu is the established interstellar law-enforcement presence on this planet."

"That's right!" Mihoshi piped in, poking her head out from behind Superman's massive back. "Ah, Mr. Lobo, sir..."

Above Superman's head, the object of the discussion floated with her foot in Superman's hand. "And the GP statute of limitations ran out on me a long time ago, like I keep saying," Ryoko added. "So why don't you take your little gal pal there and towel her off, and maybe head off for some other planet. Uranus is nice this time of year."

"Temptin'," Lobo mused. "But that don't put cancer sticks in the Main Man's lungs."

"Enough of this," Nagi shouted, leaping out of the bath water and lashing out with her sword just above Superman's head. Ryoko's body jerked away, and Superman was left holding nothing more than her severed foot.

"You're coming with me, Ryoko," Nagi snarled. "If your friend has a problem with that, he can take it up with my partner."

"Hah! You haven't caught me yet!" Ryoko yelled out, firing a blast of energy at Nagi from the air. Her maimed leg had already begun to sprout a small appendage that took the shape of a new foot, and she made a quick dash for the hole Nagi had blown out of the wall.

"Deal with him, Lobo..." Nagi ordered, running out the wall to give chase. "I'll handle the target."

"Oh, yeeeeaahhh!" Lobo replied, tackling Superman into the bath. He laid into him with a flurry of punches almost too fast for the eyes to follow. "Me 'n' you, S-Man, still fraggin' after all these years!"

"Do something Mihoshi!" Sasami cried out. "He's hurting him!"

"Uh... sir, I'm errrr... going to have to ask you to s-stop that," Mihoshi stuttered in time to her quaking knees. She pulled out her sidearm and pointed it at the hairy stranger. "Don't make me shoot! Because I reeeeaally don't want to find out if it doesn't work on you!"

Lobo simply laughed in delight, and continued pummeling Superman.

"Um, this is your last warning?"

No response.

Finally, Mihoshi pulled the trigger on her gun and closed her eyes tightly. There was a whine of energy building up... and then nothing. "Oh, geeeez!" she sobbed.

"I told you you shouldn't take that thing into the bath with you," Sasami scolded.

"Save your ammunition," a voice gargled from underneath Lobo. Suddenly the bounty hunter's next punch was stopped midway as Superman caught it in his hand, and then followed through with a left hook of his own, sending Lobo flying into the stratosphere. Superman stood up and shook his head vigorously. "You'd better get Sasami out of harm's way, Detective. I'll see to Ryoko."

"Wait! I can help," Mihoshi objected. "I can go get my gun fixed and I can--" She watched him fly after Lobo until he disappeared from sight. "I... can't fly," she finished glumly. "Well, we'd better do what he says," she told Sasami.

"Yeah! We need to find Tenchi and my sister!" Sasami suggested. "I just hope Ryoko will be OK."

Ryoko was not OK.

Bad enough that she made an idiot out of herself in front of everyone she knew, worse that she'd very likely hurt Tenchi and felt like utter scum for it, but now she was being hunted like a dog by that ice queen Nagi.

On the bright side, at least Nagi had taken her mind off Tenchi. Almost.

She perched on a large branch and scanned the ground for any signs of life. Fighting Nagi wasn't such a hassle--she'd been doing it for years before she got locked up in that cave by Tenchi's grandfather. Of course, the difference was that she had always had Kagato backing her up in those days, so even if Nagi did beat her, capture was never much of an issue. And of course, back in the day Ryoko had the power of her three gems to work with. Since the battle with Tenchi's grandfather--followed by the battle with Tenchi seven hundred years later--she was down to just one. It hadn't really been a major issue lately, but it was a safe bet that Nagi had come prepared to fight Ryoko at full strength, and that wouldn't be the case. Still, it was Nagi, the galaxy's most lethal and effective bounty hunter. No big deal.

It was the new players that complicated matters. Lobo seemed to be working as her partner--and that alone was proof that Nagi had changed a lot in seven centuries--and she probably intended for him to stack the odds against her even more. Or Nagi had somehow learned that she had made some powerful friends recently, and Lobo's job was to keep Tenchi and the others from interfering.

As for that cape-wearing circus act, screw him. The cowboy was clearly no ally of Nagi's, given her reaction to him, but he was no friend of hers either. He seemed more interested in her connection to Washuu, and that meant she had about as much use for him as she did for her. "Let 'mom' fight her own battles," she grumbled to herself. "I've got trouble to spare--"

Her train of thought collapsed into a burst of flame and smoke as the tree she was hiding in suddenly exploded around her. Ryoko teleported away from the conflagration and rematerialized out in the open air above. There she found the woman she'd been looking for, looking back up at her from the ground.

"Word to the wise," Nagi smirked, still pointing her sword at the burning tree. "When you want to blend in with your surroundings, don't talk to yourself. Wearing less red would help, too."

"Maybe I should skip to the fighting part," Ryoko answered. "Hiding was never much my style anyway!" She dove to the earth below and a staff of orange energy formed in her hands, then she struck at Nagi with as much force as she could muster, aiming the blow to cleave her head from her shoulders.

Casually, she blocked the thrust with her own sword. "I'd noticed that, actually," Nagi said dryly. "I've never known you to lope off into the forest like a scared rabbit, Ryoko. Usually you either try to blow my head off or you're halfway to the next planet before I can even make my move. Instead I find you living in the lap of luxury, presumably with your own creator among others."

"You know about that?" Ryoko asked, ducking a slash from Nagi's blade.

"Guessed," Nagi replied. "You were the only one to ever escape me, Ryoko. And when you disappeared, I had plenty of time to do my homework. Professor Washuu's scientific legacy endures even to this day. It didn't take much digging to learn that she mysteriously disappeared a few decades before your criminal career began. The resemblance is obvious, if you know what to look for. But the final piece of information came today, when Ken-Oh-Ki had found your scent in Metropolis, but at a much higher concentration than he'd ever experienced. Lo and behold, the local journalism records revealed she's been to the city, and battled the resident hero."

For a few seconds they clashed swords wordlessly. Nagi tried to snare Ryoko in her energy whip, but she leaped away before it could connect.

"From there it was child's play to find you," Nagi huffed. "We just stole a small animal from a pet store, wrote a message signed by the name credited with the news photo of Washuu, and left it to wander around in the tabloid's main office. Like clockwork, it drew the attention of 'Superman' and he led us straight to you in search of your inventor. It's too bad that she's so lax in covering her own tracks, but then you can't pick your family..."

"Big deal!" Ryoko spat. "It's not like... I ever had to worry about you before! Why waste time letting the trail cool off?"

"You're getting sloppy," Nagi answered over the sizzle of energy generated by the crossing of their weapons. "I came to this planet five hundred fifty years ago when I'd learned that your failed invasion of Jurai had somehow resulted in you being buried out here. I never returned, thinking that if by some twist of fate you WERE alive, you'd never stick around long enough for people like me to find you. You've settled down, Ryoko. There's some sick notion in your warped head that associates this place with the word 'home', when you should have learned a long time ago that fugitives and pirates and castaways like you don't GET homes. Not while their past can catch up to them at any moment."

"From where I stand, you still haven't caught me, lady," Ryoko scoffed.

"A stalemate, then?" Nagi asked. "Perhaps, since I haven't defeated you by now, and you have no interest in escaping me. I suppose the thing to do now would be to finish me off. That's what a notorious space pirate would do, correct?"

Ryoko knitted her brow and ran at her energy blade first to run her through. Instead, Nagi simply tossed a small translucent capsule at her. It bounced off the edge of her blade and popped open into a mass of purple colored goo, entangling Ryoko's entire body.

"Too slow," Nagi said.

With a growl, Ryoko reared her head back and jerked it forward at Nagi, sending a multitude of bright blue spikes of energy flying from her hair straight for her. Nagi simply raised her sword and deflected each needle of light as it approached her. "I'll let you know when I'm impressed." she said calmly.

Ryoko was livid now, and after a moment of concentration, she willed herself intangible, and phased her way free of the purple slime, and down into the surface of the earth. Nagi stepped closer to examine the spot where she had disappeared, and then the ground began to shake beneath her feet.

"Cute," was all she had to say.

"And I got a nice smile, too!"

With his wide array of superhuman abilities, he could bend solid steel in his bare hands, or change the course of mighty rivers. At the moment, Superman was willing to trade it all in just for the ability to shut Lobo's filthy mouth.

"So whaddya say, Supes?" Lobo prattled on. "Ya know, you were more'n happy to hand over that yellow bastich Mongul the last time I came cruisin' through your neck of the woods. Unless you got some thing goin' on with the bluehead chick that I don't know about..."

He struck him in the jaw and focused a beam of heat vision on his left foot. "Mongul had just attempted to betray me and threatened to destroy the Earth before you showed up," Superman answered sternly. "And you weren't threatening innocent lives or private property when you asked for him on Saturn. I can't do much about your methods, Lobo, but I can interfere with them when they cross over into my line of sight."

He stopped fighting to hold his hot foot in his hands. "Oh, sure, lemme introduce ya to my complaint board," Lobo said, raising one hand and punching Superman square in the face. "Rosie Palm and her Five Sisters!"

The blow didn't carry nearly the force that Lobo had attempted to put into it, however. This was partly because Superman saw it coming and was able to roll with it, and partly thanks to Lobo's precarious balancing act on one leg had limited his ability to lean into the punch. Before Superman turned Mongul over to Lobo, the two of them had fought a common foe, Imperiex, stationed in the atmosphere of Saturn. In preparation, Mongul spent several days training Superman in combat, helping him to become even more adept in the use of his powers than he already was. Traitorous or not, Superman had to admit that Mongul had been a good teacher. He hadn't fought Lobo in some time, and for once he was actually managing to dominate the psychotic brute.

He kicked Lobo's free leg out from under him, sending the biker butt-first to the ground. The problem with all this was that it was just a diversion. Nagi was somewhere out there attempting to hunt down her prey, and until he could put Lobo down for the count, there wasn't much Superman could do to stop her.

The worst part about it was that he let them play him like a harmonica with that stupid decoy pig. Jimmy Olsen indeed... not that he felt terribly foolish for suspecting Washuu of such an immature prank, but it'd be a long time before he could live down being outsmarted by Lobo, even if he did need help to do it--

And suddenly he figured out a way to turn the tables. "I have to admit," Superman said pleasantly while ducking a big boot from Lobo, "I never thought I'd see the day when you'd become such a gung ho team player, Lobo. The bond of trust between you and Nagi must be pretty strong, huh?"

"Trust is for feebs," Lobo shot back. "In this line of work, the only thing you count on is the pay, Blue. As long as I stick to my end of the plan and keep big horsefrags like you offa Nag'ums, she'll stick to her end and bring in the Ryoko babe. She wants ta do a double cross, then I'll just track her down and snack on her internal organs for a spell. We both know how it runs."

"Of course," Superman smiled. "But what I mean is that you must know Nagi pretty well to be so certain she can defeat Ryoko on her own. After all, you'd never deliberately lure me away from her if there was a chance Ryoko might win and slip away. I bet you know her powers inside and out, right?"

"Hmmmm... y'know she DID mention a coupla thousand times how Ryoko always kept gettin' away whenever she went after her... Come to think of it, she could probably use a hand, and I ain't seen a good catfight in a dog's age..." Lobo rubbed his hand against his bearded chin. "Yeah, I think I could arrange that." And without warning he connected a thunderous haymaker on Superman's chin that sent him flying back in the opposite direction they had come. "Don't worry, babe! The Main Man is comin' to lend a hand, or any other appendages ya might be lookin' for! Haw haw!"

Had Lobo been paying more attention, he might have noticed a very large grin on Superman's face as he went careening through the forest.

"You wanna play games with me, Nagi! You're in such a hurry to die, I'll be more than happy to give you what you want!"

That was the shout Superman heard as he went flying through the forest. So far, his attempt to trick Lobo into leading him to his partner had been working perfectly. With each punch, Lobo knocked him ever closer to where he wanted to go. Now that he had a fix on what he was looking for, he could take it from there on his own. Twisting his body in midair, Superman began to add his own power to the inertia of Lobo's last punch, and raced for the location of the sound he'd just heard. What he found wasn't pretty.

All he knew so far was that Lobo had joined forces with another bounty hunter called Nagi, and the two of them had used him to lead them to their target, the alien refugee Ryoko. Naturally, Superman had objected to just kidnapping someone without any explanation, and in his heart of hearts, he'd hoped that the Ryoko girl wasn't the type of vicious monster that a price on her head might imply.

But as he crashed through the trees into a clearing he found his illusions shattered. Standing some thirty feet tall was a pile of loose soil, matted together in the shape of the woman in question, and nearby was a large pit in the ground where it must have come from. In the dirt-Ryoko's hands was Nagi, struggling to escape from the creature's massive grip. A quick scan of the soil-thing with his X-Ray vision revealed the true Ryoko inside, mimicking the strangling motions of the larger version like a marionette. It was most likely a form of telekinesis, he realized, and that meant the best thing to do was to break her concentration.

"Put her down!" Superman ordered, flying straight through the dirt-Ryoko's arms, then doubling back to catch Nagi as the "hands" broke apart after being cut off from the main body. Before Ryoko could do anything else, he set Nagi down and took a deep breath and blew at the legs of the gargantuan puppet with super-breath, knocking loose the dirt that held it up. Ryoko finally came crashing down from her toy, and came leaping out of the pile of earth furiously.

"Whose side are you on?!" she demanded, raking at Superman's eyes with her fingernails.

"The right side," Superman answered, backing away from her. "I won't let them take you, but I won't let you kill them, either. Understand?"

"You needn't have bothered," Nagi smirked, wiping the dust from her cloak. "She'd been threatening me in her grasp like that for three minutes before you showed up. I'd have died of boredom first."

"If you're so convinced she's harmless," Superman asked, "then what's the idea with the bounty?"

"I just collect on them," Nagi replied in a deadpan tone. "Besides, just because she's no threat now doesn't mean she never was. Once upon a time she'd be sending an army of demons after us until we were both dead. Time is a cruel mistress in some cases..."

"That is IT!" Ryoko screamed. "You want to finish this, Nagi?! We'll finish it once and for all! Here's your stupid demon!"

Superman turned to find Ryoko raising her hands and gesturing with them in a manner he'd never quite seen before. As if in response to her actions, the air began to swirl around and finally a faint outline formed to reveal a hideous monster seemingly made of vapor. It began lumbering after Nagi, and when he tried to stop it, it simply batted him out of the way without a thought.

"Felt that..." he murmured, clutching his chest tightly as he struggled to get back to his feet. "Magic?"

"Yeah, who's lost it now?" Ryoko shouted. Nagi simply stepped backward and watched the demon in fascination.

"Hmmph. Didn't think you still had it in you," Nagi admitted. She sidestepped the demon and drew her sword. "But I certainly learned how to deal with these creatures before. I think I can stop one now..."

Before that could be put to the test, the demon suddenly charged at Nagi, knocking her over, then in Ryoko's direction, causing her to nearly lose her balance and fall. Then the demon simply ran away felling trees and bushes as it went. "Oh for the love of crap..." Ryoko fumed. "Get back here! Ya stupid demon!"

"Well now... that IS an interesting development," Nagi remarked. "You can create them, but you can't control them. And who knows what kind of destruction it'll cause once it gets to a populated area. I wonder how far the nearest one is from here..."

"How... do I stop it?" Superman asked, rising to his feet.

"Well, um..." Ryoko hesitated.

"HOW?" he yelled.

"You can't," Ryoko sighed. "I can't control them at my current power levels. There's nothing you can do..."

"We'll just see about that," Superman grimaced. "You'd better hope this doesn't take long." And he leaped into the sky at his top speed.

"Looks like you're all alone again, Ryoko," Nagi sneered. "Although I imagine you're used to it by now."

Ryoko watched the man fly off after her demon and then turned to face Nagi. "Well who needs him?" she growled. "The dope was just getting in the way. Now where did I leave off? Oh, yes, I believe I was crushing you!" She rushed Nagi and clamped her hands around her throat. Nagi made no move to resist.

"Hmmph. And then what? You'll kill me? Because you'll have to if you plan to keep me from hunting you down. You heard Superman. He won't be too pleased to find out you killed someone on his watch. But you could always kill him too, right?"

Ryoko tightened her grip. "Shut UP! SHUT UP!"

"How much attention will that attract, I wonder?" Nagi gasped. "He's quite the public figure on this planet. You could have whole armies breathing down your neck eventually. All because you're too set in your ways to run away. Earth is your home now, and you'll turn it into a living hell just so you can keep living here. I guess I was wrong, Ryoko... you haven't lost your edge at all. You've just confined your brand of horror to a single location."

"You don't know ANYTHING about me, you cold-hearted freak! I'll--!"

Ryoko's threats were broken off when she felt a massive hand clasp around her mouth and a second one around her neck. Immediately, she released Nagi to struggle against this new threat.

"Aw, man I love it when they talk nasty!" Lobo chortled, shaking Ryoko like an old rag in his hands. "Gimme a little of that, doll. I been a real bad boy... ARRRRGGGGHHH!"

Lobo roared in agony and looked down to find that Ryoko had generated her energy blade, and stabbed him in an extremely sensitive area. "What... is... the fraggin' DEAL with that part o' the Main Man's anatomy lately?" he asked, spitting each word out between gasps of agony. In a rage, he threw Ryoko to the ground, and fell to his knees to massage what was left of his midsection.

"He's an idiot," Nagi observed coolly, pulling out her energy whip and balling the cord up in her hand. "But an idiot with excellent timing, I must admit." Without hesitation she pulled Ryoko's head up by the hair and brought the coils of the whip down on the base of her neck.

She shrieked for a full twenty seconds. Nagi raised the whip again and waited for Ryoko to fall silent. She twitched her arms and legs as she recovered from the pain, and then Nagi brought the whip down again. This time her howl of pain died out as she went unconscious. Nagi dropped her head to the ground unceremoniously, and kicked her in the side. No reaction, save for the rise and fall of her back as she breathed slowly.

"You all right?" she asked Lobo without taking her eyes off her handiwork.

"I heal real fast," Lobo muttered. "Nothin' I can't walk off, but we better get movin' if we wanna collect that reward." He took a hand from his injured groin and put two fingers in his mouth to whistle. "Cabbie can pick us up here, and we can be in hyperspace before Supes even gets back from tanglin' with that demon."

"What about Ken-Oh-Ki?" Nagi demanded. "I left him in Metropolis so he could rest from his illness. We have to pick him up before we go."

"What about him?" Lobo asked. "The little fraglet knew the score same as us. We go back to Metropolis now, that'll be the FIRST place Supes'll look for us. We leave him behind, nobody'll bother him. And you can pick him up next chance ya get. Just make sure you let me know so I can bring the barbecue sauce..."

Blast Washuu and blast that maniac daughter of hers!

Bad enough that Washuu knew how to synthesize her own Kryptonite, now it turned out Ryoko could summon magic-based creatures. And when it came to magic, Superman was just as vulnerable to it as the next guy. Hopefully it was a short family tree, because at this point he wouldn't have been too shocked to run into an Uncle Stu who could emit red-sun radiation from his dentures.

The demon was fast, too, which made sense since it was composed entirely of air, and nearly weightless. And it didn't take long for his telescopic vision to spot the first point of interest on its line of travel: The Masaki house. So he could either waste time saving Ryoko from the bounty hunters, or waste time saving Ryoko's friends and family from Ryoko.

Not much choice at all, he shrugged, and when he finally came within reach of the demon, he grabbed for its hind limbs. Unfortunately, his hands passed through the monster as if nothing was there. Still, it was enough to get its attention, and the demon turned around and slashed at him with its front paws, knocking him out of the skies.

Inches from the forest floor, Superman halted his fall and willed himself back into the air, and back on the creature's tail. Clearly, despite being made of gases, it could become solid when it was provoked. And he couldn't duke it out with a pile of semisentient air molecules. Not at Standard Temperature and Pressure anyway...

He took a deep breath and expelled his lungs at the demon in a gust of freezing cold. At once shining white crystals began to form throughout the demon's body, but without even slowing down the beast seemed to flow out of the path of the arctic blast and reformed itself, like a snake shedding its skin.

"Shoot," Superman said with his next breath. It didn't seem to possess a single portion of air, but instead inhabited whatever air was available. And that gave him another idea.

The cold trick had already gotten the demon's attention, but Superman kept pestering it anyway, buzzing around it and dodging its swipes like a giant housefly. Once he was sure he had irritated it into a murderous rage, he started flying up, stopping only long enough to make sure it was following him. When it began to waver, he taunted it again, and then continued his upward climb into the sky. At last, as they approached the upper ionosphere, where the blanket of air covering the Earth's surface was at its thinnest, the demon began to expand as the air within it was drawn apart by the lowered pressure of the altitude. It whined in protest, and then dissipated without a trace.

"Up, up, and away," Superman chuckled to himself. That would have been how he'd have written the headline for this battle, except that no one was around to know it was news. Convinced the demon was no longer a threat, he sped down to the planet below, and found a group of people waiting for him. The trouble was it wasn't who he had expected to find.

"We came back as soon as we could!" Mihoshi exclaimed. The tall blonde cop had switched her bathing towel for a more official looking blue uniform. Beside her was Sasami, holding the family pet Ryo-Oh-Ki in her hands, and on the other side was Sasami's older sister, Ayeka.

"But when we showed up, they were already getting into their ride and they zoomed away!" Sasami cried. "Ryoko was with them, and she looked badly hurt!"

"Would someone please tell me what is going on here?" Ayeka demanded. "I had thought Mr. Superman's business here had been concluded, and why did you two drag me out here and away from Tenchi?"

"I'm afraid it has to do with your friend Ryoko," Superman explained quickly. "A pair of bounty hunters attacked us in that hot spring of yours a little while ago and promised to collect on the reward for her capture." He knelt down and held Sasami's shoulders in his hands. "I need you to remember, honey. Did they say anything--DO anything, that might help me find out where they could have gone?"

"She's NOT my friend!" Ayeka objected.

"Well, I ordered them to stop," Mihoshi pondered, "and the big one just laughed and said it was all up to the law now. Something like that. The pilot was revving up the engines as he said it. Did you hear what he said then, Sasami?"

She shook her head to indicate the negative. "Uh-uh. I put my fingers in my ears when they started to take off because it was so loud. Oh, I'm so sorry, Superman!"

"Don't blame yourself, now," Superman said firmly. "It's my fault for leading them here in the first place, and I shouldn't have taken Nagi and Lobo so lightly. I promise you, though, that I WILL find her. I'll think of something..."

"Excuse me, sir, but frankly I don't see why you'd want to bother with such a thing," Ayeka argued. "The simple fact is that Ryoko IS a space pirate, and a veritable monster in her own right. If she's been arrested by a legal authority, then it's almost a certainty that it was done for a legitimate reason. Let the Galactic Tribunal handle the matter as they see fit."

"The Tribunal?!" Superman repeated in shock. "Are you saying that THEY commissioned all this?!"

"How did you know that, Ayeka?" Sasami asked.

"Well, naturally, as a princess of Jurai, I have been schooled in many different languages commonly used in this Galaxy," she explained proudly. "Including Interlac, which was the language used on the bumper sticker on the aft of that strange looking vehicle. I caught a glimpse of it before they left, and it stated that the private craft had been specially commandeered for a mission authorized by the Galactic Tribunal. Not that I know who THEY are precisely, but clearly they must represent a judicial entity somewhere in this region of space."

"Wow, Interlac makes for some weighty bumper stickers," Mihoshi added.

"The word 'judicial' may be a reasonable description of what they claim to be," Superman replied, "but it's a far cry from what they actually practice on their world. I've crossed paths with them before, and if they decided to go after Ryoko, then it's a safe bet that they've already made up their minds to have her sentenced to the fullest extent of their law. I can't let that happen! I've got to go after them... and so do you, Detective Kuramitsu!"

"Mm-hmm!" Mihoshi agreed, followed immediately by a cry of panic. "Wait, ME? What do you need ME for? You're the one who can bounce bullets off his chest and wrestle angels and stuff!"

"The Tribunal will put Ryoko on trial," Superman explained, "but that'll be a mere formality. Nothing we say will influence their decision, but we might be able to convince them that her crimes have already been addressed once by another authority. That's where you come in."

"Ohhhh, I don't know about this..." Mihoshi whimpered.

"We can ALL go!" Sasami cheered. "I can go back and get Tenchi and Miss Washuu, and then Ryoko can have all her friends there to help her out! Right, Ayeka?"

"Absolutely not!" she snapped. "I forbid you to go, Sasami! It might be dangerous, and there's no way I can abandon Tenchi's side while he's recovering from his wounds."

Superman perked up at this. "He's hurt?"

"He fell and hit his head when he tried to stop Ryoko and Ayeka from fighting in the bath house," Mihoshi explained.

"It was HER fault--!" Ayeka insisted.

"The fact of the matter is that your sister's right, Sasami," Superman went on. "The Tribunal Planet is no place for a little girl, even if she is the princess of a powerful imperial domain. And from what I understand, it was Tenchi who freed Ryoko from the cave that imprisoned her on Earth. The Tribunals might interpret that action as aiding a known felon. As for Washuu... trust me, it'd be better off for everybody if she didn't come along."

"Well, at least take Ryo-Oh-Ki with you," Sasami pleaded. "She can help you find Ryoko. They're mentally linked."

"We, ah, could use some transportation," Mihoshi added. "My own ship's in the lake by the house. And I've logged... a little flight time with her."

"I'm not sure I follow," Superman said.

Sasami took Ryo-Oh-Ki off of her head and whispered into her ear. She then tossed the creature into the air, and before Superman's astonished eyes, the small animal expanded and twisted in shape until at last a massive brown crystalline object floated above them in the sky. Ryo-Oh-Ki meowed to demonstrate her pride in showing this trick off.

"She's a spaceship, see?" Sasami grinned.

"Great Krypton..." Superman trailed off, still staring in awe at the transformation. "I think you've just sold me on her, Sasami..."

"Great!" Sasami said. "Then I'll go pack you some carrots for fuel, and you can be on your way! Come on, Ryo-Oh-Ki!" At her command, the spaceship collapsed back into the form of an animal, and Ryo-Oh-Ki dutifully ran after her to the house.

"No good can come of this," Ayeka sighed. "I just know it..."

"Well, since we've got a few minutes," Superman said to Ayeka, "I was wondering if I might use your phone...? I think I'm going to have to let some people know I'll be away for a little while."

NEXT: The Brave and the Bold.