evilpii

I’m curious also about the pacing of the chapter since the stuffy commentary and above description directly follows the next snippet, which I posted in mini-chat the other day.

The slats closed behind the captain, leaving him alone within the small hollow of Ryu-Oh’s tree. Here, the blue glow loomed around him as he knelt with the core unit. When he rested his fingers on its housing, a translucent panel appeared before his eyes.

Upon it, Ayeka’s face gazed back at him, the Mark of Rage extending one claw over each of her cheeks. Beneath her violet locks of hair, her amethyst eyes somberly met his, giving him pause. She took a slow, careful breath, steeling herself before she spoke.

“To whomever is watching this recording, I hope that this message finds you and Jurai safe from harm. As you likely know, a horrible shadow has fallen upon Earth and threatens not only the Empire, but also I fear, the universe at large.”

She recorded this during the battle, Sagami thought to himself, listening intently.

“I have instructed Ryu-Oh to release her logs of these events to someone I trust in the event that I am defeated…” She stopped herself, her eyes closing, troubled by what she must say. “… or consumed by the Enemy.”

The officer furrowed his brows, unsure of her meaning and worried at its possibilities.

Her eyes raised back to his, set and determined. “These records will hold not only data on what has and will become of me, but the goddess willing, a record of the Enemy’s strength and tactics.”

Her sight turned down to her fist, which rose into the panel’s field of vision. In her grasp was Tenchiken, the ruling line’s sword key, the winding vines of its hilt extending far offscreen, stretched from the form Sagami knew. Longingly, her eyes scanned over its violet guard, glowing a soft green as her voice softened.

“Please,” she pleaded, “make good use of this knowledge and finish the work started here.” Tears appeared and rolled down her cheeks as her brow and lips tightened, regret and anger both pushing through her. “Know that I fought this vile corruption until my last breath.” Her eyes closed tightly, her hands clutching the key closer to her chest. “Know that I was Jurai Ayeka, daughter of the Jurai royal family.”

Her image winked away while the data core whirred beneath his fingers, copying the logs he required. However, Sagami knelt speechless in the chamber, his mouth dry and his mind racing.

Goddess, he thought, what happened on Earth?

What are your thoughts? ^^

One problem I see is that since OVA1, the mantra has been “Tenchi can’t be copied”. That is, if he were killed and, more importantly for your context, reborn, the godlike power he possesses would be lost also. This creates an issue with creating a clone of Tenchi with all of his power. A further issue is that Tenchi was bred to exceed the goddesses, to create something beyond them. As such, it could be argued that his power would not be an extension of theirs, so much as an evolution or something completely apart from them.

Now, let’s throw those annoyances to the wind and run with your hypothesis. Assuming that a clone of Tenchi could be created with his full power and that the full power of Tenchi was an extension of the three goddesses, then I could see him, or a copy of him, manipulating their power to his whim, provided he was able somehow to separate the power from the goddesses. That is, if Tsunami was in control of this protective field around Sasami, Copy-Tenchi would have to wrench control of the energy being manifested by Tsunami. There would have to be a reason Copy-Tenchi could override Tsunami’s edict over that energy.

At least, that’s my thought. Take it as you will. ^^v

Hmm, trying to think about it in a logical sense would probably be a bad thing to do, can anyone truly make sense of the powers of gods?

Well, understanding something is different than being able to use it. This issue came up recently in a Dresden character build I did for an RPG, where a character could redirect magic but not natively cast it. In a similar vein, this Copy-Tenchi is repurposing Tsunami’s power, not creating it himself. Think of it like driving a car. One doesn’t need to know the intricate engineering of the machine in order to drive steadily down the street. In the same light, Copy-Tenchi doesn’t need to understand Tsunami’s power if he knows how to seize control and use it.

Now, as a writer, one should have an explanation why Copy-Tenchi could do this. A Washu explanation could be used to pseudo-science it away. ^^v

I’m researching energy wavelength physics and how differing forms of energy interact with one another in an attempt to be able to explain this scientifically when Washu inevitably provides an explanation to the T. Crew concerning the changed nature of the Tenchi clones. How sad is it that fanfiction has been a doorway to bettering myself in the pursuit of knowledge instead of higher education?

You’re preaching to the choir. ^^v Adapting graduate level material is how I write Washu usually. ^^v

So, if two differing waves meet, obviously one would resist the other initially, but if one continues at the same amplitude and wavelength, while the other begins to increase, will the increasing energy then overtake the static? And will said increasing wave then take on aspects of the original wave? Maybe I should pose this question to a physics forum.

This all depends on the physics you choose to impose. After all, the powers of the goddesses are not known to science, and may not follow the standard laws of conservation of mass-energy. This gives you utter freedom to do what you like, provided you can convince the reader to believe what you’ve said. ^_-

The way you describe this, I could see it working. Copy-Tenchi is effectively leeching Tsunami’s power to fuel himself, acting like a conduit, a lightning rod or sorts. Assuming standard conversation laws, Tsunami would lose energy while Copy-Tenchi gains. If Tsunami’s power was literally limitless, she would never rundown, while Copy-Tenchi would continue to increase in strength. This is where you might want to determine if Tsunami had some bounds on the physical manifestation of her power, or if Copy-Tenchi had some limit on the power he could absorb or repurpose.

As far as assimilation, I’d direct you to references on transducers, devices that convert one type of energy into another. That seems to be the endgame of your idea from what I read here.

The Tenchi clones are extensions of Mikaboshi, the escaped [expunged?] Godlike form that appeared at the end of OVA 3, a twisted form of the being that the Choushin had groomed Tenchi to eventually become. As such they are tied directly to Him as a font of their strength, though greatly reduced and spread across a sort of ‘hive mind’. With such intimate knowledge of the Choushin energy, is it feasible that they could adapt their own output wavelength and turn the opposing force against itself?

This is an interesting interpretation of the ending of OVA3, and I could see it working. ^^v

The hive mind aspect of the clones could lead to them all adapting rapidly at the same time and as offspring of the supreme being more powerful than the chousin they might be able to do it.

I like this idea. You could explain it in analogy to parallel processing. That is, as information (damage, knowledge, etc) comes into the individual units, the minds of all the units work together to solve the problem, distributing more processing to those minds not busy (i.e. in combat).

I second supporting characterization and new characters. The manga introduced a host of new characters, such as Minagi and Ibara, who were cool without overshadowing the core cast. Also, the characterization of the core cast was probably as good as or better than their depictions in the anime medium.

Naming some good arcs might be good if you’re not going deep into plot. I believe this thread already has a list of “favorite manga arcs” to reference. ^^v