[AMS] [UY] "AA Oni!" (5/5) Chapter Five: "Checkmate." By Henry J. Cobb $Id: aa_oni5.txt,v 1.5 1997/08/17 06:22:51 hcobb Exp $ The AMS characters and situations are the creation of Kosuke Fujishima. The UY characters and situations are the creation of Rumiko Takahashi. No infringement of their copyrights is intended. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- My name is Keiichi Morisato. I go to Nekomi Tech, where I study automotive engineering. I'm a perfectly ordinary guy, a little short and frankly scrawny, but somehow I've wound up living at this strange temple with a group of aliens. There's the two beautiful 16-year old girls. Benten is the goddess of victory and she usually carries enough firepower to ensure it. Lum is an Oni. She claims to have a vast space armada, that was poised to conquer the Earth until I beat her in a chess match, but then my claim of "Checkmate" not only won the game and stopped the invasion but also got me engaged to her. Jariten is Lum's cousin and he really lives up to his name as "Brat of Heaven". He looks like a four-year-old, except for the green hair, blue eyes, horn and fangs, but he acts like a teenage delinquent. Like Lum he can fly and project energy. It gives me headaches trying to understand the physics of how they do it. Midway through my second semester with Lum, winter blew in, in the person of a Princess. I was working on my motorcycle. Motorcycles are my passion, but somehow the thought that Lum always rode with me made me take extra care with this one. I was reaching for a wrench when I felt a sudden chill and saw a snowflake blow across the driveway. It was far too early in the season for snow. I looked up and saw her standing there. She wore a pale blue kimono with her blue ponytail tied back with crystals. She was equally as beautiful as Benten or Lum, but her beauty was a pale, delicate, ethereal thing. A butterfly in all the colors of snow, except for her lovely brown eyes, stark against her pale colors. She stood there with her two suitcases, serene and timeless and frankly I just stared. "Hello." She spoke in an exact, classic, cultured way, but it came across as a reproach. "Uh, hi!" I reached my left arm behind my head in embarrassment. "Excuse me, but do you know if a woman by the name of Benten lives here?" "Uh, yeah." "Oyuki!" Ten flew out of the temple. "Jariten, it is a pleasure to see you again." Oyuki put down her suitcases and held out her hand. Ten hovered in mid air to kiss the offered hand. "Ten, what is it, t'cha?" Lum stepped out onto the porch. "Oyuki!" Lum flew over and hugged the other girl. After a moment Oyuki returned the embrace. I wiped my hands on a rag and stood up. "Uh, I can get your bags for you." "Why, how gentlemanly of you." Oyuki disengaged herself from Lum. "Darling, Oyuki is an old school friend of mine, t'cha!" "Darling?" Oyuki seemed to be puzzled. "Darling and I are engaged to be married, t'cha!" "I'm Keiichi Morisato, pleased to meet you miss." "You may call me Oyuki." I followed Lum, Ten and Oyuki into the temple, carrying her bags. "Please put my things over there." Oyuki gestured to a spot in front of the door marked: "Benten's room. Trespassers will be vaporised!" "Lum, what's the confusion?" Benten slid open her door and saw Oyuki and noticed the suitcases I carried. "Oh, why are you here?" Lum walked over to her own room. "Neptune is very cold this time of year." Oyuki replied. "Neptune is always frigging cold. That's no excuse for crashing over here!" Benten crossed her arms. "I'll charge you rent!" "I have no desire to infringe on your franchise. My needs are few. If I may, I'll share your room. How much are you charging your other friends currently?" "What makes you think you're one of them?" "All of us on Neptune were very worried when you disappeared." "Then why didn't you come looking sooner?" "We didn't know where you went. Have you done much?" "I've been having a lot of fun here with Lum. A hell of lot more than I would have making snowmen on Triton. And who died and made you my mother?" I put down the suitcases in the hall and stepped back. "Darling, let's go for a ride please, t'cha?" Lum had returned and wore blouse, skirt and boots and had a sweater tied over her shoulders. "I'm sorry, but I've got the bike disassembled at the moment." "Then we can take a walk, t'cha." Lum plucked Ten from where he was hovering while watching Benten's and Oyuki's conversation. Lum put her other arm around mine and we walked quietly to the park. "Look Ten, there's your little friend Risa, why don't you go play with her, t'cha?" As usual, Ten was reluctant to associate with any prepubescent girl. "I don't wanna!" "Ten!" Lum gave him a stern look. "OK, OK!" He flew off to the little girl. Lum sat on a park bench quietly for a while, thinking. "Benten and Oyuki are lovers, right?" I asked. "Yes, that's part of it. Oyuki is the princess of Neptune, t'cha." "Neptune, isn't that a gas giant in the solar system?" "Her home is on Triton, but she has estates on the other moons and on Pluto, t'cha." "But, the Americans have sent a probe to Neptune, why didn't they see anything?" "There's not very many of Oyuki's people and they like to hide. This is really all about Pluto, t'cha." "Huh?" "A thousand years ago, Pluto and Neptune had a close conjunction and Oyuki's people established a colony on Pluto, but then the orbits diverged and a natural disaster wiped out the colony, t'cha. Oyuki's people have had spacecraft for a few hundred years but they haven't dared to go back to Pluto until a few years ago when Oyuki's powers developed, t'cha." "Oyuki's powers?" "She didn't take a spacecraft to get here, I think, t'cha. Oyuki can create a wormhole across the entire solar system. She is the most powerful woman in the history of her people, t'cha." "So she created a wormhole to Pluto?" "It's a lot more convenient than taking spaceships back and forth, but it's more that having Oyuki around has given them the confidence to reestablish the colony. That's the problem, t'cha." "Why is Pluto a problem?" "Oyuki's people are very anxious that she marry and produce a royal heir, t'cha." "Who's the local favorite?" "There isn't one. All of Oyuki's people are women. In past generations they'd have to wait until the planets were in alignment so they could hop to Earth and back. Fortunately they are very long lived, everybody else on Triton is at least 165 years older than Oyuki, t'cha. Oyuki didn't have any real childhood friends and so she and Benten fell for each other when we met in school. When they went back to Neptune, Oyuki announced that Benten was her mistress and that she wouldn't consider any candidates that weren't acceptable to her also, t'cha." "Benten was pretty steamed about this?" "Yes. Benten isn't ready to settle down. I think that Benten probably ran to Earth this time after another disastrous matchmaking attempt by Oyuki's court. But it looks like they're going to work it out, t'cha." "Huh?" "If Benten really didn't want to see Oyuki, she would have left this solar system. By staying here, she's waited for Oyuki to come for her. Ten!, let's go back, t'cha!" When we got back, Benten and Oyuki were snuggled up on the couch, watching Casablanca on the VCR. "I'm going to fix dinner, t'cha!" Lum announced. "Hey, Ten, do you want to help me fix the motorcycle?" I asked him. "I wanna see the movie." He protested. "Ten!" Lum glared at him. "Alright!" Ten grumbled and floated after me. "You made the right choice Ten." I said from under the motorcycle. "What?" He paused in his circling. "Girls really dig guys who know their way around motorcycles." "Really?" "Yeah, think about me, besides motorcycles I'm a nobody and yet I've got Lum, right?" "I guess so." "And what do I know about art films? Only that that movie is way overrated." Over the next few weeks, I didn't see much of Oyuki and Benten, except at breakfast and dinner. Lum seemed to have pegged it right, they did seem to be getting along. I had a Saturday off, because I couldn't find a part-time job that day and so I was studying in the living room. "Darling, it's so nice to have a day together like this, t'cha." Lum placed the teapot on the table and spread her books out next to mine. "Why do you have to work so hard, t'cha?" I scrambled to catch my papers as a wormhole opened in the living room. Oyuki and Benten stepped out and it closed. Oyuki was in her kimono, but Benten was in a white dress with her hair loose and makeup on her face. "Your costar is such a gentleman." Oyuki observed. "He's a wimp. I bet he wouldn't know which end of a pearl-handled pistol to hold." Benten countered. "Now I gotta get outta this outfit before I go nuts!" When Benten returned, she was in her usual bikini, with her hair back up in a chain. "Comeon Keiichi, I promised I'd teach you how to fly the airbike." "Uh, sure." Benten sat behind me as she explained the controls. "Darling, be careful, t'cha!" Lum seemed to be unusually apprehensive. I could understand her concern, given the tricks that Benten had played, but the airbike had to be the ultimate motorcycle thrill. How could I resist? I got the hang of it after a few minutes. If anything it seemed to be easier than a motorcycle. The craft had an advanced auto-stabilization feature. "How come it's so stable?" I asked Benten. "So I can have both hands free for guns." "Oh." I climbed at high speed, leaving Lum behind. "What happened today?" "Oyuki's got me staring in this movie where a college student wishes that I'd stay with him forever. I just wish she hadn't brought up the harp playing." "Darling!" Lum caught up with us, short of breath. "Sorry about that. Let's go back now." I circled around the neighborhood and then landed in the driveway. "Lum, have you seen the men in black suits?" "No Darling." "They have been reassigned to other duties." Oyuki announced. Elsewhere, a giant blue sphere hung in a black sky, with scattered white clouds on it's surface. A man in a black parka put down his snow shovel for a moment and turned to his companion. "How much of this did she say we had to do before she'd let us back?" "Watch it, here comes our jailers." "Here's your coco, Agent Yu." "Thanks Shimoko." "And yours, Agent Fu." "Thank you Kooriko." "It is so rare to have the company of such nice gentlemen here on Triton." Back on Earth, I finished the semester OK, in spite of my weekend jobs. On the night before Christmas, I couldn't sleep. I got off of my futon and pulled on my nightrobe. I went to my dresser and pulled out the box I'd saved up to get. Was I doing the right thing? I didn't know. I walked out onto the porch and looked up at the stars. One of them came down and hovered over the temple. It was an enormous spacecraft, with blinking lights along it's side. What I could make out of its shape reminded me of old sailing ships. A figure stepped out of a hatch and levitated down to the ground. He was huge, at least eight feet tall and overweight. He had green hair, twin horns, huge fangs and a tiger-striped suit. "Where is Lum?" He asked. "Uh." "What's that noise, t'cha?" Lum stepped out onto the porch. "Come along Lum." He grabbed her hand. "Your mother and your fiancee have been worried about you." "But Daddy! My Fiancee is right here, t'cha!" Lum pointed at me. "This guy?" "Sir, I can see how you might find Lum's story a bit hard to believe." Lum shot me a look that could shatter rock. "...After all she is a princess and I'm just an ordinary guy." "Darling, you knew, t'cha?" "Yeah, Ten told me." I turned back to her father. "But I really do love her and I'd be proud to be her husband, if she'll have me." I turned back to Lum and pulled the box out of my pocket. "Lum, will you marry me?" I pulled out the ring. She presented her finger and I slipped it on her. "Uh, checkmate." "Yes, Yes Darling, I will marry you t'cha!" She turned back to her father to show the ring. "See Daddy, t'cha!" The large Oni stood there for a moment. "Very well, but your mother will have to approve him. She's back on Uru." "Darling," Lum turned back to me. "Will you come along, t'cha? It's only two days there and back, t'cha." "Sure, just let me get dressed." If I had known how long it would be before I stood on Earth again I would have taken some more things, put my affairs in order and told somebody I would be gone for a while, even if I couldn't explain where. As it was I packed for a weekend trip. "Darling, hurry up, t'cha!" "Lum, there's something I need to know." "Yes Darling?" "If there was no invasion, why did you pick me?" Lum looked downcast, so I took her into my arms and held her for a few moments, then she looked up into my eyes. "I had no choice Darling. When I was born it was prophesied that my life would be extremely weird. So, I either had to live alone or find the second best man at dealing with weirdness in the universe, t'cha." "So, I'm just helpful?" "No Darling, I do love you, t'cha!" "Second best... What happened to the best?" "Well, he already had a girlfriend." With that we walked hand in hand to leave with her father and Ten. "Lum?" "Yes Daddy, t'cha?" "What's this Checkmate business?" "It's just an Earth custom Daddy, t'cha!" At that moment, somewhere in Tokyo, Skuld, sixteen year-old goddess of the future stood in pink bunny pjs with her back in a corner of a room. Both hands clinched on the handle of her hammer where not sufficient to hold it steady. She glared at the source of her torment. "T-touch me again and you die!" Ataru Moroboshi looked up from his futon. He considered getting up and going to comfort her, but he had enough of her games for the moment and it was too late at night to get rapped on the head by that hammer again. "Well, I'm not the one who pretended to sleepwalk over to my futon!" "It's the Ultimate Force, it's trying to drive me insane! But, I'm not going to let it! I'll find some way out of this wish and the restriction against doing you bodily harm!" Skuld began to giggle, high pitched, loudly and hysterically. Downstairs, Ataru's mom was woken by the noise as Skuld's giggles faded into sobs. "Oh, I wish I'd never had him." Unfortunately, there were no goddesses present to take her wish. Henry J. Cobb hcobb@slip.net http://www.io.com/~hcobb Anybody for an "Obnoxious Goddess"?