"A Power Jewel?" a voice then asked. "You seek to bestow someone else on this world with a gift such as that, Destructo?"
The Doctor paused as he sensed his visitor's presence, the latter having just warped into the chamber with his own more silent version of a Boom Tube. "Metron," he hailed the New Genesis-based scientist as he turned to gaze on the other being, he seated on his Mobius Chair. "What brings you here? Aren't you still going forth to probe the Source to help you unravel the mysteries of the universe?"
"You interest me now."
An eyebrow arch. "Oh? How so?"
"Your connection to the Seekers, of course," Metron replied matter-of-factly. "Both through your working relationship with Earth's own Jewel Warrior and later, when you journeyed to Yiziba to eventually evolve yourself into what you are now."
"The Seekers are dead, my friend. You might not find the answers you desire."
"Agreed. Still, the remnants of their influence on Existence is plain for me to see and I wish to understand why that is so." The visitor from Supertown waved to the necklace in the Doctor's hand, the crystal looking like it was a swirling mix of clear diamond, onyx ebony and crimson ruby, it glittering with the universal Power which made the Jewel Warriors, the heiresses of the Seekers scattered across all the known sentient races of the Universe, so respected and feared. "The Jewels. The Cat's Claw swords which accompany them. The Crystal of Power on Yiziba, made -- I know now -- from the same mixture of meson the Jewels themselves were made from. The time-space null-field dimension called Sanctuary. The fact that three billion Earth-years ago, all the Seekers elected to end their lives -- and they were just as immortal, as omnipotent, as those who live in the Fourth World, to say anything of the natives of Oa. You can see why I've become so curious as of late concerning them."
"I know you well, my friend, even though this is the first time we've conversed with each other," the Doctor replied. "And because I also know you take as much delight in seeking out your answers concerning whatever appears to interest you, I won't spoil your search with an easy answer."
Metron nodded as he willed the Chair to follow the Doctor out of his control room into a long corridor, marked on both sides with doors leading into side cabins where his current host's assistants lived whenever they weren't off doing the Doctor's business worldwide. "I am aware of the one you now seek to give that to," Metron then noted as they slowly proceeded to the last doorway on their left. "A most curious subject you've chosen for this experiment, Destructo, indeed."
"But a worthy choice, Metron," the Doctor replied. "As he stated many times again, he lived his life for the very moment he was experiencing at that particular place in the space-time continuum. The traditions, modes of behaviour, laws and everything else which tried to strap him down from the day he was born until the day he 'died' were meaningless to him." He stopped to stare at his visitor. "He, my friend, is very much like what you and I have evolved ourselves into being. And that must be preserved in my eyes, Metron."
"I would not have bothered with him, to be honest," Metron admitted. "My experience with those such as he has often been bad." The touch of an amused smile then crept across his face. "And given his own particular approach to living his life, even if he was still only an adolescent and, thus, lacking in any sort of experience which really mattered, I suspect I would have become as annoyed with him in the short term as did his would-be mate from Uru."
"She was ignorant of the situation she found herself in after his so-called 'proposal' to her," the Doctor explained as he motioned his guest to follow him. "And she was manipulated by those who would have gladly seen Ataru slain so they could have Lum for themselves. As his 'murderer' so readily proved -- as Melissa Phelps will discover when she performs the autopsy on his body. Once that happened . . . "
The door to the room they were before opened as a female voice declared, "Whatever love, trust and faith I had in Lum vanished. Hey, Sensei! Who's your friend?!"
"A humble seeker of knowledge, Tariko," the Doctor then declared as he and Metron gazed on the newcomer, a being literally reborn from the living soul of Moroboshi Ataru when he fell fatally ill thanks to a special poison secreted into his food by one of the Niphentaxian spies in Tomobiki -- courtesy of a subliminal command inserted into the mind of his mother -- that tailor-made to be undetectable by Oni technology and to easily overcome Ataru's legendary ability to withstand punishment.
When the reborn Ataru -- who had been given the name "Tariko" ("child from outside the village") by the Doctor -- had awoken this morning and been told the whole story about how s/he had died and been reborn, what feelings the younger person had felt for Lum -- to say anything of anyone affiliated to the Oni -- had died with them.
"I am not humble," Metron asserted as he nodded a greeting to Tariko, and then he stared back at his host. "I see how easily you overcame the restriction a Power Jewel always forces on any prospective welder, Destructo."
"Easy as pie," Tariko stated with a snort. "You see, . . .
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(Posted Sat, 23 Sep 2006 03:14)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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