On a distant planet, a bomb explodes within the MeCA Bank! Ryouko and her gang run out laughing and carrying large sacks of money. At a bar where elf-like creatures drink, there's another explosion! Ryouko and her gang run out laughing carrying carts of liquor. At a fashionable store, mannequins are wearing fancy dresses. In a blur of motion, Ryouko and her gang swipe the dresses and run off laughing.
Ryouko is an incredibly successful pirate, and she laughs gleefully as she holds up her loot -- money, clothes, jewels! She laughs and laughs until she just gets tired of it all. Something is missing.
Ryouko is sitting in her hide-out as this happens, and Hotsuma witnesses it. He asks her, concerned, what's wrong. Ryouko says that she's not happy and starts to leave. Hotsuma asks her, concerned, where she is going, and Ryouko says that she's going out to think about things (I guess). As she leaves, Hotsuma drops his facade of gentle concern and frowns angrily.
In Tokyo, the news reports are talking about the emergence of strange beams of light popping out of Tokyo bay. Tenchi and Sakuya are watching one such report in Tenchi's apartment. Actually, only Tenchi is watching. Sakuya is sitting on a chair, holding herself in a little ball. Tenchi comments on the strange news, but Sakuya isn't really listening. She's still despondent from what she realized the day before. (In the 22nd episode, she realized she doesn't have any memories of her life from before she met Tenchi.) Tenchi tries to be cheery, but it doesn't work. Tenchi looks at the pictures on his desk -- one of him and Sakuya, and the other of him and the Tenchi gang outside his house in Okayama.
A copy of the picture of him and the girls outside Okayama also sits in the living room of his Okayama house, and Ayeka passes in front of it as she sets a giant mousetrap. In the kitchen, Sasami is slowly cutting up a daikon, but her mind is elsewhere. "Yuugi...." she thinks. The pot on the stove begins to boil over, but Sasami doesn't notice it. Ayeka walks in, and turns the heat down. "Careful now," Ayeka says. "That could be trouble." She walks out, ready to continue to fortify the house. (She's carrying wooden spikes.) "Watch out for Yuugi," Ayeka warns. (I'm guessing at the dialog here.) Sasami sighs, and resumes cutting.
Washuu continues to investigate the crystals Tenchi and the girls all wear. She decides to investigate Sakuya, and she sends a little device to gather data. (It's one of the "Tenchi-cams" that she used before, back in the 3rd episode.)
On an snow-covered planet, Ryouko has left a trail of footsteps behind her in the snow. She tires of walking up the hills, and begins to fly along. She lands, and makes a large snowball. She thinks about how fun it'd be to throw it at Ayeka. (I guess....) She tosses the ball, which rolls down a hill, picking up snow as it falls. By the time it reaches the foot, it's as big as her. She makes another ball, tosses it after it's counterpart. It comes to rest beside it, just a little smaller. Ryouko flies down, picks up the second, smaller snowball and drops it on top of the first one. Snow falls off the snowball as it lands, and it becomes the head of a frowning snowman. Ryouko thinks about how much Sasami would enjoy this, and how Mihoshi would.... Ryouko teleports her herself so that her head is stuck inside the snowman's head. Ryouko begins to yell, after the style of Mihoshi "Oh help, help! I've got my head stuck in this snowman! Help! Help!" (I'm guessing here....) She pulls her head out and begins to laugh at Mihoshi's imagined antics. Then she stops and gets depressed.
She decides to fly back to the hideout and talk things over with Hotsuma.
She also sneezes -- it's cold, and she really isn't dressed for this type of weather.
As she walks through the corridors of her hideout, she accidentally comes across Hotsuma. Hotsuma is in a room, talking to someone via some communication device. Hotsuma is speaking loudly, his back to the door, so Ryouko overhears him.
Ryouko figures out that Hotsuma is just trying to keep her away from the earth (I think), so she gets angry. But she calms down after a little while, and goes away while she figure out what to do.
Hotsuma detects someone outside, and he dashes out. He doesn't see anyone though (Ryouko left just a little while before) but he suspects that Ryouko overheard him. He goes back and tells Yuugi (that's who he was talking to) what just happened. Yuugi tells Hotsuma something (probably to get rid of Ryouko) and ends the conversation.
Yuugi then turns her attention to Sakuya. She watches Sakuya as she sits depressed in Tenchi's apartment. Sakuya justs stares into a mirror. Tenchi walks in with a tray of food. (I guess it's lunchtime.)
Yuugi frowns. Perhaps she's disgusted by this scene. "It's time," she says. She summons Tsugaru and sends him off to do something. (I'm not sure what.) Tsugaru vanishes. Yuugi looks at the pink crystal which begins to crack....
Washuu's Tenchi-cam wanders around Tenchi's balcony, gathering data and beaming it back to Washuu and Tenchi and Sakuya eat.
Meanwhile, Ryouko is swimming around in a hot bath. She thinks about her and Hotsuma. She gets really angry as she thinks back to the time when she and Hotsuma fought off the Galaxy Police at his castle (back in the 17th episode.) Her anger grows as the thinks back to her and Hotsuma sitting alone in the ship, gazing at the stars warping past them (back in the 18th episode.) Her eyes blaze with anger and her rage explodes. She stands on the floor of the bath -- most of the water has been driven out by her power and now rains down upon her.
Ryouko goes to her room and stands in front of the full-length mirror. On the dressing table next to it there is a bottle of wine, and resting on that is the set of photos of Ryouko and Tenchi on their "date" (in the 10th episode) "Tenchi...." she thinks, and she recalls the moment on that date where Tenchi took her by the hand. She thinks of Okayama....
Ryouko, dressed again in her pirate clothes, goes back to her ship. She turns the shield down, and a tractor beam pulls her on board. Hotsuma watches this from a monitor is his room. As Ryouko walks down the corridors, suddenly she realizes something is wrong. Hotsuma presses a button, and the ship explodes.
In their ship, Kiyone and Mihoshi pass by Saturn. Kiyone is sitting in the pilot's seat, and a large teddy bear is sitting in the co-pilot's seat, because Mihoshi is in her quarters looking for something (I think the crystal.) Mihoshi's quarters are pretty messy, and there are a couple of stuffed animals and such lying about. Kiyone is pretty exasperated with Mihoshi, and she lets her know over the intercom, and Mihoshi is apologetic, but still exasperating. Kiyone regards her own crystal, and thinks about how nice it will be to go back.
In Yuugi's domain, Yuugi watches the cracked pink crystal. The crystal shudders, tremblers, cracks again, and shatters! "It's done.... Goodbye, Sakuya!" says Yuugi.
Tenchi is sweeping in front of the Tokyo shrine. His mind is not on his duties, but on Sakuya. He wonders what's wrong with her. His friends drop by. They're going to the beach (they're carrying beach stuff in plastic bags) and they want Tenchi to come along. After all, they seem to say, there's sure to be pretty girls there, and maybe you'll find someone. Tenchi thinks there's something wrong with this, since he already has a girlfriend.
His friends act surprised when Tenchi tells them that. "What! You got a girlfriend without telling us! WHo is she? Do we know her?"
"It's Kumashiro Sakuya."
"Ah! Kumashiro Sakuya." Tenchi's friends let that name sink in. "What school does she go to? Does she have a sister?" (I don't actually know if they ask this; it just seemed funny to me.)
"She goes to our school! We went to the beach together!" Tenchi recalls that day (in the 20th episode.)
Tenchi's friends ponder the news that Tenchi is going out with a girl from their school and they didn't know about it. "All right, this joke's gone far enough!" says Tenchi. But then he realizes that they are serious. He envisions Sakuya, in her school uniform. He sees, in his mind, her turn, and walk away. "Sakuya!" he calls, and Tenchi suddenly runs from his post.
"Hey, where are you going?" asks his friends. "How weird."
Meanwhile, back in Okayama, Ayeka is on the roof of the house, wrapping barbed wire around the wooden spikes she was carrying before. She's doing a good job, for the most part, but occassionally gets jabed by the barbs.
Within the house, Washuu analyses the data she got on Sakuya. She has a picture of Tenchi and Sakuya eating lunch on her monitor. She applies one filter to it. A horizontal line sweeps through the image, and when its done, Sakuya isn't there. Sakuya, it seems, has no life force.
Tenchi runs into his room and grabs the student directory. He finds Sakuya's name in there along with her address. He dashes out again, and doesn't see Sakuya's entry fade, and then disappear. In the picture on his desk of him and Sakuya, Sakuya's image fades, leaving a picture of Tenchi with his arm around empty air.
Meanwhile, Hotsuma looks at the burning hole in the spaceship, and gloats and laughs over Ryouko's death. But Ryouko is still alive! She flies up and hits him, knocking him through the roof and onto the snowy surface of the planet.
Ryouko and Hotsuma face each other. The start talking, and I really couldn't tell you about what. Ryouko brings out the pictures of her and Tenchi, and starts caressing her face with it. She says tender things about Tenchi, but don't ask me why.
Suddenly her crystal begins to glow, and Hotsuma takes that opportunity to launch his attack. He leaps at her and slugs her.
Along the streets of Tokyo, Tenchi runs to Sakuya's apartment. The crystal which hangs around his neck begins to glow...
...as does Mihoshi's. The glow leads her to it. "Found it!" she shouts. "But why is it glowing like this." Kiyone's crystal glows too, and she realizes that something must not be right, so she pushes her ship full throttle and speeds back to Earth.
Sasami runs out of the Tenchi house to show Ayeka her crystal, which is also glowing. Ayeka, on the roof, notices her crystal glowing too. Then she looks out at the lake by the house. There's a glowing beam coming from there. Tenchi's grandfather sees it, and he looks concerned. Washuu monitors it from inside the house. Her crystal glows as well.
Meanwhile, Hotsuma and Ryouko continue their fight.
Kiyone and Mihoshi's ship enters Earth's atmosphere, but something is not quite right with their re-entry. Tsugaru smiles as she watches the ship descend.
Washuu is still analyzing Sakuya's data. She applies another filter to the image. This time, only Sakuya shows up. "I see..." she says. "Sakuya is Yuugi's shadow."
Tenchi arrives outside Sakuya's apartment. He bangs on the door. "Sakuya!" he shouts. "Open up! It's me, Tenchi!" There's no answer, so Tenchi opens the door. "I'm coming in!" But the apartment is complete barren. "Sakuya?" he says. But there's nothing there to answer.
And what of Sakuya herself? She stands on a busy Tokyo sidewalk, standing still while others bustle around her. She looks down on the sidewalk, where lies the picture taken of Tenchi and her. But she's no longer in the picture -- only Tenchi is there, with his arm cradled around nothing but air. "No..." she says. "This can't be. Tenchi! What's happening? Tenchi!"
Once again, I would like to thank Junji for his help. This synopsis could not have been written without him.
I am the keeper of Gummi Wisdom!
Email address: gee@math.berkeley.edu