The Rebound Effect--Chapter 8
The Rebound Effect--Chapter 8
Part 8
Ten'ou Haruka rounded the corner at what would have been an insane speed for anyone of lesser skills. For her, it was mildly uncomfortable, but speed was of the essence. Seeing that the road ahead was straight for a moment, she spared a glance toward the unconscious form in the passenger seat.
Professor Tomoe's face was blackened by soot from the fire that had destroyed his laboratory, and his clothing was ripped and torn in many places. A makeshift bandage, soaked through with blood, covered the light wound that a piece of debris had made in his side. Fortunately, he had been rendered unconscious by the initial blasts Uranus had thrown into the lab, and hadn't really been able to fight back so that the gash in his side was the only real injury he had sustained.
In the back seat, Kaiou Michiru was tending the professor's daughter, Hotaru. She had been catatonic when they had arrived at the mansion, and Michiru suspected that it was because of an internal battle between Mistress 9 and the Hotaru from their world. Not that she had any proof, mind you, but it was as good a theory as any. Much to her shock, she had found this Hotaru to be a cyborg.
It was obvious from the moment she had picked her up that this wasn't the sickly little girl that they had first met in their world. Perhaps this Hotaru had been more damaged by the accident than theirs and this was the way her father had chosen to keep her alive.
Not that it really mattered right now, they were on their way to some place way out in the Okayama Prefecture, several hours from Tokyo, where Pluto had said they would find help. What kind of help, she didn't say, but now wasn't the time to be arguing.
The sun was already drooping below the horizon by the time Haruka skidded to a stop. They had arrived. Not that there was much to look at, just a small gravel parking lot with a black van in it and a long set of stairs stretching away up a mountain.
The sign beside the stairs proclaimed them to be at the "Masaki Shrine." Well, a shrine was a decent place to go for an exorcism, after all.
"Okay, how are we going to handle this?" Haruka asked.
Michiru thought about it for a moment. "I'll run up and see if I can't find this "Washuu" person. You stay with these two."
Haruka nodded solemnly and watched as Michiru climbed the stairs and was soon hidden from view by the trees. Turning back to her charges, she opened the passenger door and wrestled the Professor out of the car and onto a flat patch of ground. She checked his wound and removed the gory bandage, which she replaced with a clean handkerchief. He still hadn't regained consciousness, and that was beginning to worry her.
Then she flipped the passenger seat forward and pulled Hotaru out and onto the ground a short distance from her father. Haruka frowned at the prospect of having to carry the half robotic girl up a long series of stairs. She was REALLY heavy.
//Do you know this Washuu person?// she asked herself. Well, her other self, the one that seemed to be from the future of some other world or something.
//I've heard the name before... just a rumor though. She was apparently a scientific genius or something who vanished a few thousand years before the dawn of the Crystal Millennium. If this is the same person, I'm surprised to find her on Earth, of all places.//
Haruka nodded. //I wonder how Pluto knows her.//
//Probably met her fifty years from now or something and keeps coming back in time to pester her. You know how Pluto can be sometimes.//
//What? You mean the way that you're never certain if the last meeting you had with her has already happened or not? I know what you mean.//
//Exactly.//
//I wish Michiru would hurry up and get back, this waiting is killing me.//
//You're too impatient. Calm down a bit, it'll do you good.//
//I still hate waiting. I wish I was driving right now.//
//Tell you what, when this is over, we'll go to the track and I'll show you how it's done.
***
Michiru, herself, was wishing that she was back already. The stairs flattened into a walkway after a few hundred feet and carrot fields replaced the dense forest that had covered the base of the stairway.
Fortunately, there was someone working in the fields and she decided that he would probably be able to help her.
She called to him and the young man looked up from his work and waved to her. He shouldered his hoe and walked across the field to the walkway.
"Hello, can I help you?" He spoke in a cheerful tone, but she could tell that he was tense for some reason.
"Yes, I'm looking for Washuu." Michiru watched in puzzlement as his smile wavered.
"Great, why can't we ever have normal visitors," he muttered so quietly that she almost didn't hear it.
"Excuse me?"
"Oh, nothing. You don't want to kill her or anything, do you? The last time someone showed up looking for her, they almost destroyed the house."
"Oh, no, a friend of ours told us that she could help us with a little problem we were having."
"‘Us?'"
"Yes, my friends are waiting at the car. We thought it would be easier to just go get Washuu and take her down there." Michiru was having a hard time making it sound like she actually knew what she was talking about, but she kept up the effort.
"Oh, well, I was about to quit here, anyway. Let's go on up to the house." He turned and began along the path again. She followed and soon they were climbing more stairs.
***
Lady Mercury pushed away from the console and turned to Kiyone. "We'll be there in about three hours. Gather up anything that you're going to need before I prepare the ship for impact."
"Um," Kiyone gave her a doubting look. "Don't you mean landing?"
"This ship isn't designed to land on planetary surfaces. And since my scans are showing no space ports in the area of Earth..."
"Oh, that's just great. What else can happen?"
Sometimes it's best to keep your mouth shut.
***
Washuu was a lot... shorter than Michiru had expected. Younger, too. In fact, she had almost convinced herself that Pluto had made a mistake.
When they arrived at the house, they had found about a small group of women sitting on the porch and eating watermelon, Washuu among them.
One of the women, the one with purple hair done into twin pony tails, stood up at their approach and called a greeting to the young man, his name was Tenchi, who had lead Michiru to the house. Another girl with spiked cyan hair tackled Tenchi.
"Hello, Tenchi, you're back early! Who is your guest?" she asked. If elder Michiru hadn't been as experienced in reading emotions, she would have never noticed the hint of suspicion in the young woman's voice. And anger, but that was mostly directed at the woman currently sitting on top of Tenchi.
"Errr..." Tenchi looked a bit nervously, trying to get the girl to let him up. "I don't really know. She says that she's looking for Washuu."
Washuu looked up at the sound of her name. "Oh! That's right, you're one of the ones Setsuna-chan said she was sending!" She looked around for a second or two. "Shouldn't there be more of you?" Ayeka and the other girl had started an argument by this point, but no one except Tenchi seemed to notice so Michiru just ignored it.
"Yes, Ms. Washuu," Michiru answered. //Setsuna-chan? Well, I just hope that she's really able to help us.// "My friends are at the bottom of the stairs. Two of them aren't able to walk and we didn't feel that we could carry them up the stairs. We were-"
"I'll help you. But only on one condition," she announced. A couple of the other people on the porch groaned slightly, having heard this ploy before.
Michiru felt a shiver of fear. Conditions were never good in dealings like this, especially when there wasn't much choice. "Alright, what's your price?"
"Would you please... Could you... Call me little Washuu?"
Michiru almost fell over with laughter and relief. "Of course, Little Washuu! You really had me going there for a minute." Washuu smiled.
"Hey, Ryoko!" the pink haired girl shouted. "Why don't you do your mother a favor and go help this young lady's friends to the house?"
The one called Ryoko broke off her argument and turned to face Washuu. "Aw, mom, do I have to?"
//Mom?// Michiru thought. //Well, I've seen stranger things before. Maybe she's the reincarnation of someone, too.//
"Yes. And do be careful, please. I wouldn't want anyone to get hurt." For some reason, that sounded ominous.
***
Washuu's laboratory was amazing. Not only was it larger than the entire house, but the equipment was equal to or better than anything that the Crystal Millennium had to offer. For the first time since she had been introduced to Washuu, Michiru was starting to feel that she might actually be the help they had been seeking.
"So, what did you need my help for? Setsuna-chan seems to make a special effort to not be helpful." Washuu had taken up a seat on a floating cushion and was giving Michiru a calculating look.
"Well, a couple of our friends are possessed by beings from space..."
"Oh, is that it?" Washuu snorted at the simpleness of the task. "I thought this was going to be something worthy of the Greatest Scientific Genius in the Universe."
"And I have someone else inside my head that claims to be me from 1500 years in the future or another world or something like that."
"Hmm...." Washuu began walking around her slowly. "Now, THAT sounds interesting." She began to type into a shadowy terminal that manifested in thin air. "Yes, I see... your astral signature is doubled up and one half has a different temporal signature... and dimensional signature, too."
Michiru began to feel uncomfortable, almost like a lab specimen.
"And you wanted me to fix this for you?"
"Um, yes, that would be really nice of you... Little Washuu."
Washuu beamed. "Of course! So, do you want me to clone another body for the other mind, send it back to where it came from, or just destroy it altogether?"
Michiru laughed nervously. "Another body will be fine."
Washuu typed rapidly for a while. "Yes, this should be easy."
There was a whooshing sound as someone used the combination elevator and teleportation device to enter the lab. "Put them over there, Ryoko, dear," Washuu called out without even looking up. Haruka moved up behind Michiru and placed a hand on her shoulder.
Grumbling the whole way, Ryoko carried both Professor Tomoe and Hotaru over to a pair of tables that had just materialized. Moving reasonably gently, she placed one on each slab and then turned to the scientist. "Is that all, MOM?" She made the title seem almost like an accusation.
"Oh, yes, why don't you run off and go play or something," Washuu replied, not paying any attention to her daughter.
Ryoko glowered at her mother for a moment before she drifted out of the room via the teleporter.
"Strange people," Haruka whispered to Michiru.
"We're not exactly normal, you know," she replied.
"Hmm..." Washuu said as she looked up from her work. "We just need to perform a few tests before I'm ready to split you. Oh, will your friend be requiring the same service as well?"
"Um, yes, but could you please take a look at Hotaru and Professor Tomoe first? They are the ones that need immediate attention."
"Of course, then I have a few tests I'd like to run."
"Tests?" Somehow, Michiru knew that she was going to want to hurt Setsuna by the time they got out of there.
***
Mercury's ship was now in orbit around Earth, much to Kiyone's disappointment.
Mercury was bent over the communications terminal trying to decide where to "land." "Hmm... what do you make of this?" she asked Kiyone.
Kiyone glanced over the data scrolling across the screen. "Looks like the identity beacon of a Galaxy Police ship."
Mercury nodded. "It's only a few hundred miles from Tokyo, so we might as well land there."
Kiyone sighed. That meant that she would see Mihoshi again all the sooner. //Maybe she's better by now. Yeah, I was out for quite a while, she may be through with it already. I hope.// She forced herself to believe that and smile.
"Alright, we're ready for final approach." Mercury brought the ship about and into the atmosphere. The outer hull began to soften and run upward until the ship was almost teardrop shaped.
"What's happening to this ship?" Kiyone asked, extremely worried.
"Oh, it's falling apart. It's not meant to take the heat of reentry and the systems that maintain the ice of the outer hull are shutting down."
"Ice? You mean that this ship is made of ice? That's crazy!"
Mercury shrugged. "I happen to like ice. Besides, the interior is made of metal." She pressed a complicated sequence into the terminal before her and the walls seemed to surge forward as they were sucked into it. Soon, the interior of the ship had become a hollow cavity of ice.
"All the major technological components that make up the ships are stored in subspace pockets and the control circuitry is micronized into a handy carrying case. I just take the systems with me and make a new hull whenever I need it. It's quite convenient."
"Wait a minute, does that mean that the only thing left between us and solid ground is air and ice?"
Mercury smirked. "Yep. Here, put this on." She handed Kiyone the case that had once been the nerve center of the ship. It had two heavy duty straps that allowed it to be worn as a backpack along with several knobs and dials. The whole thing only weighed about fifty pounds or so. "It has a grav chute feature. Just push the red button on the left strap to activate it."
"Isn't that dangerous with all this ice around? Hey, and what about you?"
"I'll be fine, and the ice can be removed. Tell me when you're ready."
Kiyone hurriedly put on the pack and found the red button. "Okay, this is nuts but I'm ready."
Mercury produced a wand from nowhere and held it up before her. "Mercury Planet Eternal, MAKE-UP!" In a whirlwind of lights and feathers, Mercury's clothing dissolved and was replaced by a blue skirted outfit with a pair of small wings on the back.
"You expect to land with those little wings? You really are insane."
"No, I expect to fly by force of will. The wings are just symbols."
Mercury looked around quickly. "Okay, push that button as soon as I dissolve the ice."
Kiyone nodded her readiness and Mercury willed the ice to liquefy. Soon they were falling freely from several thousand feet above the earth amidst a rapidly thinning cloud of water droplets.
Kiyone pressed the red button and felt a gentle tugging as the chute took hold and slowed her downward acceleration. Mercury matched speed with her precisely and soon they spotted their objective. A large lake by a house and, a bit farther away, a small shrine.
***
"Hmm... this one is interesting. She has three distinct astral patterns. Two look like the same, but the third is... hmm... it's not from earth, I know that much." Washuu turned from her study of Hotaru and looked at Michiru, radiating cute innocence. "You want the two that are terrestrial in origin, right? Can I keep the other one?"
Michiru shifted nervously. Haruka looked at her and shrugged. "Do you mean Mistress 9?" Michiru finally answered. "She's extremely dangerous... but you can keep her if think you can contain her, I guess." //After all, if you can do what you say you can, she shouldn't prove too much of a problem.//
Washuu smiled broadly. "Thanks! Now I just have to get the other two out of there..."
She clipped a few hairs from Hotaru's head and dropped them into a hyperspacial hole. "Just run a few quick scans... there." Another table slid out of hyperspace with a nude Hotaru clone one it. Washuu pushed a couple more buttons and a pair of helmets dropped from the ceiling.
She affixed one to each Hotaru and went back to typing for several minutes. There was a crackle of electricity and then both Hotarus' eyes fluttered open. Cyber Hotaru, now only Mistress 9, screamed in general outrage and tried to leap off the table. An invisible force field snapped her back into place and her attempts at blasting her way free met with no success, either.
Washuu smiled broadly. "You'll get your chance to play, later. Why don't you go play with the tribbles?" She cackled maniacally and the table vanished into the floor, presumably bound for a room filled with furry softballs.
The other Hotaru, meanwhile, jumped from the table and shouted, "Michiru-mama!" Then she threw herself at Michiru in a fierce hug.
Washuu looked back to the other, naked, girl and started typing again. "The patterns in that body seem to have mixed somewhat during the transfer... They shouldn't be too hard separate again, but she's not going to be herself until I get a chance to fix it."
Michiru, who hadn't been subjected to a full-blow glomp in a long time or at all, depending on which mind you asked, could only nod. Haruka smirked slightly at her lover's distress, but couldn't help feeling relieved that Hotaru was alright. Both of her.
"Now it's time for you two," Washuu began, a maniacal glint in her eyes. "Since there seems to have been a little garbling with the last effort, I'm going to need to run a few ‘tests' before I try it again."
It would have been a lot better for them if they had just run.
***
The sun was just about to finish it's descent into the horizon as Tenchi, who had been sitting in his room trying to do some studying, heard a loud splash coming from the direction of the lake. He went over to the window and looked outside just in time to see two figures plummet out of the sky and splash down in the middle of the lake.
//Well,// he sighed to himself, //At least the last group was nice enough to arrive by the stairs. Thousand yen says they speak Japanese.//
He went downstairs to get his shoes and greet the new "visitors." Whatever planet they were from.
END
Tim Williams
https://www.angelfire.com/tn/twillia/
twillia4@utk.edu
