WARNING to those who have been shaking their heads at the number of crossovers in this series: this story will give you whiplash. Some of the crossovers here are completely and unabashedly gratuitous on my part, but since this whole series seems to have an established tradition of silly crossovers, I figured "what the hell". Commentary is provided at the end to those who don't know what the blazes I am talking about. NOTE: In anime fanfiction, Ucchan's is frequently used as the anime equivalent of the This Time Round. I am here borrowing this tradition because, well, the 'Round just isn't a safe place for Adric to hang out at anymore. Comments, criticisms, and the occasional "what the hell do you think you are doing?" complaints are always appreciated; flamers will get a nice friendly visit from the IRS. -- DBK 5 April 1999 ***** Friendly Advice A "This Time Round: To Die For" fiction. ***** "Maybe she likes you, Adric. Did you ever think of that?" Adric looked up from the cards in his hand and glared at the young man in Starfleet red across from him. The others at the table were chuckling. "That's not funny, Wes." he growled "Really, I mean it." "Oh come on, Adric." Ryoko-the-former-space-pirate interjected. "Don't be so snappish. Believe it or not, you are among friends here." The Alzarian sighed, and admitted to himself that she was probably right. Friday night at Ucchan's certainly didn't have that depressing feel of utter mortality that permeated the 'Round whenever he was there; here, at least, no one was likely to be trying to blow his brains out or throw a grenade in his direction or "accidentally" feed him a glass of poisoned punch. Anyone who did would have had to face the wrath of the restaurant's owner, who took a rather dim view to anything that might affect her business' reputation. Of course, the minor fact that said owner had loudly proclaimed that a certain short, brown-haired Trakenite was not only not welcome but was to be "dealt with" on sight certainly helped matters. Something about the unauthorized borrowing of a spatula... Adric shrugged. "Sorry. Old habits are hard to break." He glanced at the cards on the table in front of him, turned three on their sides to tap their manna, then likewise tapped his Rod of Ruin. "But just for that comment, Wes, take a point of damage." "Gladly." Adric checked his cards one last time, then rapped the table top once with his knuckles. "Done." "Ya' gotta admit, though." Wesley continued, undaunted, as Lucas began the process of untapping his lands. "She's singled you out. That might mean something." "Yeah. It means she's become like just about everyone else over there. Look, Wes... why are you bringing all of this up? I mean, I thought the idea of coming here was to get away from all of that." Wesley shrugged, but a curious half-smile remained. "Hey... it was just an idle observation." "Yes, well, please take it out of idle and drive away from it." "Oh, come on, Adric." Lucas pressed. "The thought must have crossed your mind at some point." The young man in the UEO uniform pointed to one of his cards on the table and nodded toward the person opposite him. "Ryoko, Serra Angel at you." "Hey, why me? I'm almost dead." the aqua-haired girl exclaimed, turning over one of her dice. "Because you can't defend against it while the others can." "Besides," Wesley interjected, "You gotta admit, she does look kind of cute when she dresses up to deep six you. Did you get a good look at her when she was in the fuku?" "No, I was too busy trying to dodge the yo-yo." He eyed the others around him carefully, then placed his cards face down on the table. "Alright, what's going on? What have you three been conspiring at?" Ryoko gave him one of her lopsided, mischievous, 'this is gonna be fun' grins. "Oh, nothing much. We were just comparing notes the other day, trying to find some way of helping you, and..." "Look," Wes picked up enthusiastically, ignoring the cards in his hand and the fact that it was now his turn. "we think we've found a way to help get you some respect over there, maybe even get the psycho off your back." The young Alzarian eyed them all warily. There was something about the direction this was going that prickled warnings up and down his spine. "I don't know what it is you've all got in mind, but I already don't like the sound of it." He sighed. "Ok, kill the suspense. What are you all driving at?" Wes grinned. "Ask her out." Silence. Adric's eyes blinked once, twice. "Umm, say that again?" "Ask her out. You know, on a date." Blink, blink. "That's what I thought you said." He turned to each one in turn. "Umm, Wes, not to put too fine a point on it, but... ARE YOU INSANE?!?!" "No, but she is!" came a slightly inebriated voice from the table behind them. Ryoko turned to her side. "Hey, you're one to talk, Vir..." Lucas stepped in. "Adric, just listen. Hear us out." He pointed one finger. "One: She always singles you out. She never goes after Mel or Peri or Dodo or any of the other less popular companions. Well, most of the time. Anyway, it's you she's always after, and you alone." "Two." Ryoko motioned with a peace sign. "She always takes great care whenever she does you in, always goes to great lengths to make certain everything is just right. Also, she never repeats herself; each time she kills you, its by a different method." She flashed him a skewed smile. "Its almost as if she wants you to notice how much effort she's putting in on your behalf!" "Three," Wes added, "and this is the one part you're going to have the hardest time believing, because you're usually too busy expiring to notice when it happens. But every time I've seen her do you in, there's a glint in her eyes at the precise moment you die. Its kind of hard to describe, but I'll tell you this: its not the kind of thing I've ever seen in any of the others, even when they were the one, umm, doing the deed." He took a deep breath. "I can't put a word to it. It's almost like... regret, but not quite. Anyway, the point is, its there; whatever she's thinking about when she's killing you, its not satisfaction or triumph." "Its probably frustration, because she knows I'll be back in a few hours time." Adric shook his head at the three, his mouth still agape. "I can't believe it. You three are going completely 404 on me. I mean, I can't believe I'm actually listening to this..." "Adric," Ryoko interrupted, "You have to admit, she's been giving you an inordinate amount of attention." "I've got a punchcard! The only sort of attention she's interested in giving is to the moving target kind!" "Sara and Katarina have punchcards," Wes ventured, "but last I heard they weren't on a first name basis with the reaperman." "She's a looney!" "But maybe she's just been trying to get your attention..." "There are less hazardous ways of getting ones attention!" "Well, then maybe she's just in denial..." Stunned pause, as he looked them over once more. His voice was a disbelieving croak. "My gods... you people are actually serious about this, aren't you? You really think the reason she's been killing me is because she secretly _likes_ me?" "Well, stranger things do happen." Lucas responded. "But that's the most preposterous thing I've ever heard!" Ryoko gave him a wicked grin. "Adric, you obviously haven't been hanging around anime-side all that much. The things she does to you? Around here, that's called standard courtship procedure." "Yeah." Lucas interjected, pointing out two figures on the other side of the room in a heated argument. "Hell, look at Ranma and Akane. They practically wrote the book on the subject!" As if to emphasize the point, cries of "Kawaikune!" and "Baka!" erupted, followed by the visceral crunch of a swung mallet contacting flesh and bone. "Or Ataru and Lum..." Ryoko added, as lightning sizzled outside and a voice screamed in pain. "Or Tenchi and..." Wes added. Ryoko shot him a glare. "Wes... don't go there..." she warned icily, then turned back to the young Alzarian. "Look, Adric. What's wrong with the idea? I mean, we're not saying it's the truth, only a possibility -- but one that might be worth it for you to check out." "But I already know what the answer is, and I certainly don't want to find out any more!" "How do you know?" "Ryoko, she's made it painfully obvious." "Have you ever asked?" Silence. "Well, have you?" Ryoko persisted. "No..." he said, ruefully. "Well, then how do you know what the truth really is?" He merely answered with a glare. Wesley picked up the thread. "Look, Adric. All we're suggesting is, try asking her out and then see what happens. I mean, what's the worst thing she could possibly do in response? Kill you?" "If I'm lucky!" He shook his head vehemently. "No, the answer is no! I will not ask her out, and I will not listen to this anymore! Look, I don't even LIKE her..." "You used to..." "I never said..." They all laughed. "Oh, come on, Adric." Lucas remarked. "We've all seen the episodes. What was the line? 'Leave her alone!', or something like that? Or how about that costume party?" "Yeah, you didn't seem to be objecting too strenuously..." Ryoko opined. "And what were the first words out of your mouth when you found out Tremas had disappeared?" suggested Wesley. "Or all the times you went ahead and did something risky, like maybe you were trying to impress someone?" Lucas added. "Or that look on your face whenever you found yourself alone with her..." "Or..." "Alright, alright, alright..." Adric said, raising a hand to silence them. "You've made your point." He frowned in resignation. "Ok, I admit it, I did like her. Once. But that was a long time ago. Since then they killed me off, fandom made me into a combination scapegoat and punching bag, she went psycho... Look, its kind of hard to like someone who goes out of their way to make you feel so... unwanted." He shook his head. "No, no. I gave up on that one a long time ago." "But you see, that's the point." Wes returned. "You gave up. Look at it from her point of view. You spent an entire season mooning over her, she gets the idea and maybe decides it might be fun, but then what do you do? Zilcho! Nada!" Adric coughed but said nothing. Ryoko continued. "So when she couldn't get your attention at the party -- and make no mistake, that's exactly what she was trying to do -- maybe she decided to switch to more... direct... methods." "And has been waiting for you to get the idea ever since." Lucas concluded. The Alzarian sat back in his chair in momentary silence. The other three could tell that they were making some headway. "No..." he said finally. "No, it's just impossible. Me and her? I can just imagine the number of heart attacks in fandom that would bring." "So?" Ryoko responded. "You're the one whose always saying how little they give a damn to what fandom thinks anymore. Well, here's your big chance to prove it!" "Besides... a few well-placed heart attacks might improve the situation for you." Wes ventured. Lucas spoke up. "Look, Adric. Think of it this way. She's going to be killing you anyway. What's to stop you from having a little fun with it in the process?" "Self-preservation." he mumbled, half-heartedly. His voice rose as he continued. "Look, she's got a larger following of hentai fanboys than anyone else I know, most of whom define compassionate charity as a quick death for me. Even if you three were right and she by some miracle actually did like me -- which mind you, I don't for the moment believe -- I'd end up having to face every one of those idiots in some way. Half of them would be trying to hunt me down to personally off me, the other half would be writing vicious drabbles trying to undo it." He sighed. "It's bad enough that I've got one psycho after me; I don't think I could deal with an entire army of them." Ryoko looked at him squarely. "Adric... argue for your limitations, and they're yours." "If we're right," Wes continued, "then this is going to make things a lot easier for you, probably make you a hell of a lot happier than you are right now." "And if we're wrong," Lucas concluded, "then what have you really lost? A couple more lives off the punchcard? So what else would be different?" They all stared at him, unblinking, waiting for him to answer. There is a feeling one sometimes gets when they are presented with a choice. It is that stomach-yawning, bottomless, going- over-the-falls-in-a-barrel sensation one gets when their instincts were screaming to go one direction, but everything else was pulling in another. It went way beyond the hunch that said "it didn't even seem like a good idea at the time", it transcended the deduction that said "this is bloody stupid", and left the conclusion that said "you're not only going to regret this, but you're going to wish you'd never been born" somewhere in the dust outside of Benson, Arizona. It was that feeling of inevitability that shouted at you to stop now while you still had the chance, but which for some reason wasn't getting patched through to the portion of the brain that controlled speech functions. You knew what you were about to say was going to doom you, but yet you were saying it all the same. And so, against his better judgement, Adric heard himself say the fatal words. "Ok, I'll... think about it." Which, everyone perfectly knew, meant thinking had gone completely out of the question. ***** Ryoko won the game. Before the end of Wes' next turn she played Inferno, got rid of everyone else's creatures and gave them all six points of damage (which she deflected with her Circle of Protection Red). Then on her move, she brought Urza's Tower into play, completing the Urza-tron. She also untapped her Dwarven Hold. Then she played Manna Flare to nearly double her available manna, played Disintegrate and Fork to produce two twenty-five point blasts, and blasted Wes and Adric out of the game. Then she used the last of her manna to Fireball Lucas to death. They started another game, but everyone else wisely decided to stay clear of the previous topic of conversation. One step at a time, the conspirators reasoned. In the middle of that game Kodai and Yuki dropped by, celebrating their anniversary. Congratulations were exchanged, and Wes, Adric and Kodai discussed the current spate of rumors about someone out there doing a ST/DW/Yamato crossover. "Believe it when we see it." became the general opinion. The night wore on, with most of the usual Friday-night-at- Ucchan's occurrences. Tenchi arrived, and of course Ryoko abandoned the other three to fly over to him; Ayeka showed up not much later, and the usual tussling began, much to the center boy's discomfort... A drunken teen-aged otaku made himself an annoyance among several of the female denizens before finally departing arm-in-arm into the night with Tsubasa, no doubt counting himself extremely lucky to have gotten the eye of such a positively cute anime-babe... Amuro, Chirico, and Eiji were forced by the management to take their eternal, alcohol-induced argument outside. After a few minutes, the sound of energy weapons and crunching metal could be heard... Someone spilled cold water on Ranma. By accident. Honest. After a few hours, Adric looked at the time and decided to call it quits. "I have to open up the 'Round tomorrow," he pleaded, "and those Timelords get awful cranky if no one is there to get them their morning tea." As he started to say his good-byes, Ryoko disentangled her arms from Tenchi and took a quick leap over Adric's direction. "Adric... remember what we told you." she said emphatically in a low voice. "You've got nothing to loose, so why not try it?" He gave her his usual blank look. "I told you before, I'll think about it." "Yeah, well don't think for too long. At this point she may just decide to give up waiting." "I shouldn't be so lucky." The glare he gave told her he still disagreed with the entire diagnosis... ...but at least he was considering. He waved goodbye, turned, and exited out the main entrance. After a few steps outside he paused, and found himself looking up into the early spring night sky. "Yeah, right." he mumbled to himself, "Quite impossible. They're all as looney as she is." He resumed his pace, alone, into the night. Meanwhile inside Ucchan's, the noise level had dropped noticeably. Several dozen eyes watched the figure in green and yellow trudging off into the darkness, while one watched the aqua-haired girl for some sign. Ryoko flashed that one a quick thumb's up. Tendou Nabiki smiled, then leapt atop a counter. As she did so, someone on the wait staff activated a wall control. A part of the far wall swung around, to reveal a scoreboard upon which a large number of scenarios and their odds had been scrawled. "OK folks, here are the rules!" Nabiki began. "Short odds are on how long it takes for him to ask, long odds are on how few times he gets killed asking. If he does manage to get a date..." ***** NOTES for the Crossover Impaired: 1) Japanese names are here mentioned in the Japanese style (family name first, familiar name last) rather than the Western style. Non-Japanese names are mentioned in the Western (English/American) style. 2) Ucchan's: The name of the Okonoyaki restaurant owned by Kuonji Ukyo, a female character from Ranma 1/2. Ukyo is a teenaged martial artist whose weapon of choice is a very large, razor-sharp spatula (the theft of the spatula is a reference to B.K. Willis' TTR:TDF story "The Substitute"). In anime fanfiction, Ucchan's is also frequently used as the anime equivalent of the This Time Round. 3) Ryoko: A rather powerful extra-terrestrial space-pirate who has a number of special abilities, including flying, teleportation, and the ability to walk through walls (the anime/manga translations I've seen are unclear, but depending upon who you ask she is either a very sophisticated android or an artificially-engineered person, probably some combination of both). Ryoko is madly in love with Masaki Tenchi, a teenaged high-school student with strange powers of his own (Tenchi Muyo). 4) Wes, Wesley: Wesley Crusher. Not anime, but if I have to explain this one to you, where have you been? (ST:TNG) 5) Lucas: Lucas Wolencek, from Seaquest DSV. Another mathematics wunderkind. Putting Adric, Wesley, and Lucas together as friends was suggested by Paul Gadzikowski in his piece "The Eight Doctors". 6) The card game they are playing is, of course, Magic: The Gathering. I threw this in because I've encountered a sizeable number of gamers who use "Adric" or "Wesley" as personae names (and if you don't believe me, go do an Alta Vista search on those names sometime!). 7) Ranma & Akane: The two central characters from Ranma 1/2. Ranma frequently calls Akane "Kawaikune!" ("Uncute!"), and Akane usually responds with "Baka!" ("Fool!"). Both are martial artists. Due to a curse, Ranma turns into a girl when splashed with cold water. 8) Ataru & Lum: The two central characters from Urusei Yatsura. Lum is another extra-terrestrial girl in love with an earth teenage boy. She flies and lobs lightning bolts to keep him in line. 9) Tenchi: Masaki Tenchi. See Ryoko above for explanation. 10) Vir: Vir Cotto, Londo Molari's assistant. Engaged to a psychopathic girl named Lindisty (sp?). (Babylon 5). 11) Otaku: Japanese slang for "fan-boy". 12) Hentai: Japanese slang for an Otaku with, shall we say, hormone-driven tendencies. 13) Kodai and Yuki: aka Derek Wildstar and Nova. Two of the main characters from Space Cruiser Yamato/Star Blazers. In the last Yamato movie, the long-suffering pair finally get married. 14) Ayeka: Ryoko's rival for Tenchi's affections. She too is an extra-terrestrial. (Tenchi Muyo). 15) Tsubasa: A male transvestite who is in love with Ukyo. (Ranma 1/2). 16) Amuro, Chirico, Eiji: Respectively, the central characters from Mobile Suit Gundam, Armoured Trooper Votoms, and SPT Layzner. Mech pilots all. 17) Tendou Nabiki: Pecuniary genius, will do anything for the yen of it. (Ranma 1/2). COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Doctor Who characters and concepts copyright the British Broadcasting Corporation, which really should get it's a** in gear and provide something more for us to complain about than a parody and some so-so novels. This Time Round is owned by Tyler Dion. I keep forgetting to put this in, but this time I remembered. Since this story is taking place at Ucchan's, I get to insert the ye olde Standard Takahashi Copyright Disclaimer (Ranma 1/2 & Urusei Yatsura copyright Takahashi Rumiko, Shonen Sunday Comics, Kitty Entertainment, Viz Entertainment, and AnimEigo). Wesley Crusher copyright Paramount studios, money grubbers if there ever were any. Lucas Wolencek copyright Amblin Entertainment. Nothing bad to say about them except Seaquest was BORING. Space Pirate Ryoko copyright Pioneer Entertainment. The only bad thing I can think to say is that the voice-acting for their Tenchi Muyo tapes is generally pretty awful, and that people are much better off just buying the subtitled videos. Copyright to a lot of other minor stuff held by the original copyright holders. This is a work of fanfiction. No intention is made to infringe upon copyrights already held by the BBC or whoever. This work was done entirely for fun and the delusion that it provides practice for someone who thinks he might be a writer one of these days. Yeah, right. They'll believe that.