"Now, Urd!"

	By now, the area around the temple was overwhelmed with light and
sound. The portal to heaven had opened, and Belldandy was helplessly
being drawn up.  Keiichi desperately plunged his arm into the column of
light, trying to reach Belldandy one last time, trying to give her the
gift he had promised so long ago.

	Urd quickly returned her attention to the Ultimate Magic Circle. 
Skuld had just finished drawing the final segments, laying the
groundwork for the spell which would absorb the energy of an unfulfilled
goddess contract. The energy, once drawn out of the cherry tree in the
yard where it had been sealed, would be nullified, and Keiichi and
Belldandy could stay together forever--but she had to hurry.  Urd raised
her hands high, and began the final incantation--

	A brilliant arc of white light blinded Urd and Skuld.  The sound as
it struck the ground was so loud as to be a physical force, knocking
them both off their feet.  Even as she fell, Urd realized what had
happened -- Kami-sama had seen what she and Skuld were trying to do, and
put a stop to it.  All at once, the frustration that had been building
in her since Kami-sama had ordered Belldandy to return to the heavens
boiled over, as Urd screamed out to the heavens, "FATHER!"

***
                        Obeying Destiny
                   An "Oh My Goddess!" Fanfic
                   
                    Written by Rob Atendido
                    
"Oh My Goddess!" was created by and is the property of Kosuke Fujishima.  
All characters are used with the greatest respect and the best of intentions, 
but without thought of profit.

***

CHAPTER 1

	Urd was taking down the wash, grumbling to herself, when the phone
rang. She ran back into the house by the temple, momentarily tangling
herself in the clothesline in her haste.  "Hello?"

	"Urd, is that you?"

	Urd's face lit up as she recognized the voice of her little sister.
However, she managed to mostly keep her smile from her voice as she
replied, "Well, of course, Skuld.  Who else would be answering the phone
here?"

	The voice on the other end of the line went from happy to angry in
an instant.  "Well, excuse me for calling you!  I mean, I'd think you'd
be happy to hear from me, during our --" Skuld stopped short.  Urd knew
why.

	"Our punishment?" she replied, softly.  A muted sob was Skuld's only
response.  *Wish I could change gears that quickly,* Urd thought to
herself.  *If I could --*

	But it was to no avail.  Urd began to replay, in her mind, the
events that led up to her current exile.  She remembered, in painful
detail, what her father had said...

***

	"YOU HAVE DEFIED MY WILL."

	Urd and Skuld slowly rose to their feet amid the broken earth of the
temple.  Time seemed to have stopped.  Darkness had fallen across the
land, but for the ground around the two goddesses.

	"YOU HAVE TRIED TO USE A FORBIDDEN CONSTRUCT, AND RISKED THE BALANCE
OF THE ULTIMATE FORCE."

	Skuld sank back to her knees, shaking.  Urd could only stand there,
frozen in shock.

	"YOU MUST BE PUNISHED FOR YOUR TRANSGRESSIONS."

	Skuld covered her eyes in fear.  Urd, amazingly, stepped forward. 
"But, Father," she began, hesitantly.

	Silence.

	Surprised that she was allowed to speak, Urd continued.  "Our plan
would have worked!"  She paused for a moment, glancing at Skuld.  "My
plan. If we released that energy from that tree, and dispersed it into
the Magic Circle --"

	"THAT MUCH ENERGY INTRODUCED AT ONCE INTO THE SYSTEM COULD HAVE
CAUSED SERIOUS PROBLEMS."

	"We covered that in the basic program --"

	"THE RISK IS UNACCEPTABLE."

	"But Belldandy and Keiichi belong together!"

	"WOULD YOU SACRIFICE THE UNIVERSE FOR ONE MORTAL?"

	"Father?"  Skuld said.  "If I might ask..."

	Silence.

	"Umm...Belldandy...had a lot of friends here.  I mean, if we have
to..." Skuld trailed off, uncertainly.

	Urd picked up from there.  "Yes!  Changing the memory of everyone
who has had contact with Bell, and undoing all of her actions, must
certainly take up a lot of power!"

	"THIS IS TRUE.  HERE IS HOW WE WILL DEAL WITH IT."

	Urd and Skuld gulped, involuntarily.

***

	"Urd?  Are you still there?"

	Urd came out of her reverie with a start.  "Yes, Skuld, I'm still
here." *Where else would I be,* she thought, bitterly.  She sighed. 
"I'm not cut out for this role I've been forced into," Urd complained.

	"Well, I couldn't have gotten away with it!  I'm too young to be
going to Nekomi Tech!"

	"Yes, Skuld, we've been over this.  You're up there, babysitting the
system and making sure that our changes don't cause conflicts, and I'm
down here, playing den mother to Keiichi and all of his friends."

	"Urrrd!"

	"All right, all right.  How are things going up there?  Any
conflicts with existing programming?"

	"No...at least, I don't think so.  Everything seems to be fine--all
of the basic code is up and running.  There are still some minor
glitches showing up on the main systems monitor, but that's to be
expected, I guess..."

	"Yes, that's true.  We did have to make quite a lot of changes in
the programming," Urd replied, in that condescending tone that Skuld
knew so well.  "But you should have had those problems fixed ages ago."

	"Oh yeah?  I'd like to see YOU come up here and try to do better!"
Skuld shouted back.  Urd smirked to herself, pleased to hear that she
could still get to her sister.  She let Skuld's rant continue for a
moment before she apologized.

	"Calm down, Skuld.  It's all right.  I'm sure you're doing a
wonderful job."  Urd's smile faded a bit, and she took a deep breath
before continuing.  "How's Bell?"

	Skuld also hesitated before responding.  "Bell...Belldandy is still
taking this really hard.  Kami-sama has released her from active duty
for a while."

	"All right, but you know, it's been almost a month..."  Urd
reconsidered for a moment.  After all, Belldandy's heart had been
broken, painfully. Urd sighed again.  "Oh, never mind... let's give her
as much time as she needs."

	"Urd?  Bell asked me to ask you..."

	"Yes?"

	"...to ask you to...take care of Keiichi.  For her, I mean."

	Urd smiled sadly.  "Tell her...tell her of course I will."  *If I
can...*

	Urd had barely replaced the handset when the sound of a motorcycle
announced Keiichi's arrival.  She looked up as Kei slid open the door.
"Hello, Keiichi.  You're home early."

	Keiichi shuffled in, closing the door behind him.  "Hey, Urd.  You
didn't go in to school today?"

	Urd grimaced to herself.  "No, my classes got called off today.  Got
some housework done here."  *Classes...housework...I can NOT do this!*
Urd said to herself.

	When time had begun its flow, and the bright sunlight resumed once
again, Urd and Skuld had found...that everything had changed.  No longer
was Keiichi Morisato sharing residence with three goddesses.  Now,
Keiichi and his sister Megumi were both tenants in the house which now
belonged to Urd...

	...who was now posing as a graduate student in chemistry at Nekomi
Tech.

	As part of their punishment, Urd and Skuld had to implement and
monitor the changes that Kami-sama deemed necessary.  One of them had to
keep an eye on the main computer system in Heaven, while the other had
to stay on Earth to make any spot corrections needed.

	*I suppose I should be thankful,* thought Urd.  *After all,
Kami-sama could have taken away my license completely.*  There was a
crashing noise from Keiichi's room.  Urd looked up to the heavens,
wondering if she really deserved all this.

	Urd stuck her head into Keiichi's room.  Some of her irritation was
replaced by concern, as she saw Keiichi curled up on the floor, head
cradled in his hands.  "Another migraine?"  Kei nodded, mutely.  "I'll
get you something for it.  Hold on..."

	Urd went into her room and began going through her medicines, trying
to find something that she hadn't tried yet.  No remedy Urd had tried so
far had even made a dent in Keiichi's headaches, and she couldn't use
her powers as indiscriminately as she once had.

	So intent was Urd on finding a new remedy, that she totally missed
the aura of power that had begun to grow from a tree beside the yard...

***

	Skuld was in a floating monitor chair in one of the control rooms of
the great world computer, Yggdrasil.  She was not happy.  At that
particular moment, Skuld had set the screens hovering around her to
display status reports on the many parts of the system that she and her
sister, Urd, had been required to modify, as per Kami-sama's commands. 
Strangely, many of the displays were showing problems; system slowdowns,
error messages, broken subroutines, system force imbalances, the
occasional unexplainable glitch.  Skuld frowned, puzzled.  Yes, they had
had to do a lot of reprogramming on the fly, and they didn't have time
to troubleshoot everything right away, but Skuld had been working almost
nonstop since their new subroutines had kicked in.  By all rights, she
should have reduced the number of problems to zero.  But it seemed that
for every system glitch solved, several more appeared.

	The chair swung around as Skuld adjusted a control.  One of the
screens switched over to a view of the Earth, floating in space. 
Several spots were faintly glowing a dull red, to show areas being
affected by the system stress.  *Nothing too serious,* thought Skuld. 
Still...  She sighed, and switched back to the main display.  She
cleared the screen and brought up the command line.  Skuld eyed the
blinking cursor with wariness.  "Okay, this is it," she said under her
breath.  "It's either you or me this time!!!"

	For a timeless interval, Skuld focused on the display in front of
her to the exclusion of all else.  Her hands flew across the controls,
entering line after line of new code.  Finally, with a flourish, she
typed the last line of her new program and saved it.  Skuld spared
herself a moment to marvel at the glistening perfection of her new
program. "Yes!" she shouted to no one in particular.  "This program will
once and for all fix all of the problems with the system forever!  I am
such a genius!"  Skuld clasped her hands in sheer techno bliss.

	Almost reverently, Skuld tapped in the run command and hit execute. 
She quickly moved back to the worldview screen, to see the results of
her handiwork.

	Skuld watched with mounting glee as one by one, the dull red spots
began to fade away.  "Yess!  It worked!"  She jumped up onto her seat
and did a little victory dance, causing her chair to dip and sway in mid
air. This went on for a few moments, until Skuld noticed that something
was moving on the screen.  Immediately, she sat back down and moved her
chair up close to the display.

	*That's not supposed to happen!* thought Skuld.  Although the red
areas were shrinking, they were also moving, slowly drifting across the
globe. Where are they going?  As Skuld continued to watch, the crimson
spots began to converge, once again brightening.  Somehow, Skuld wasn't
too surprised to see that the red areas looked to be settling in and
around Japan.  "No, no, no, NO!" she shouted, banging her fists onto the
screen.

***

	What a beautiful day, thought Sayoko Mishima as she came out of her
last class.  She calmly walked past the usual bunch of guys trying (and
failing) to act nonchalant.  *Losers,* Sayoko smirked to herself.  She
immediately dismissed them from her mind.

	By some stroke of chance, Sayoko found herself walking past the
headquarters of the Nekomi Motor Club.  She recalled that Keiichi hadn't
shown up for his last class, and decided to just pop in for a moment to
see if he was there.  *Just making sure that he's not sick or
something...*

	Sayoko looked through the door and saw something she had never
expected to ever see in her life:  Tamiya and Otaki, the leaders of the
Motor Club, actually working on a motor.  After she picked herself up
from the ground, Sayoko knocked loudly to get their attention.

	"Yeah, whudda ya want?" the big one -- Tamiya -- asked.

	Suppressing a shudder, Sayoko replied, "Uh, just wondering if
Keiichi was here.  He wasn't in his last class."

	"Nah, he ain't here.  I think he got sick or somethin'," said
Tamiya, getting up and wiping his hands on his pants.  "Probably went
home."

	"Oh.  Thank you," Sayoko nodded politely, if a bit too quickly, and
stepped back through the door --

	-- just in time to avoid being hit with engine parts, as the motor
that Tamiya and Otaki were working on flew apart.

	"Whoa, dude!" exclaimed Otaki.  "What happened?"  He stood up from
where he had fallen.  Sayoko was amazed to see that Otaki was unhurt,
without even a scorch mark on him.  She then realized that there wasn't
any burns, or even any smoke.

	Tamiya and Otaki were looking at the scattered parts, confused. 
Sayoko returned their puzzled glances, shrugged, turned, and left.  As
she walked off, Sayoko failed to notice the small white furry object
that hopped away behind her.

***

	Megumi Morisato walked up the steps and through the gate leading to
the house.  Her mind was a bit preoccupied with concern for her brother.
 *I hope he's feeling better,* she thought.  *He's been so depressed
lately. I wonder why?*  Megumi sighed as she stopped in the courtyard to
adjust her back pack.  Just as she was about to continue into the house,
she came to a halt.  Something didn't feel quite right...  Megumi looked
around, trying to figure out the source of her unease.  As her eyes fell
upon the dead tree beside the courtyard, she had a brief glimpse of
something fuzzy flying at her before the world went white...

	The next thing Megumi knew, someone was shaking her by the
shoulders. She groggily sat up.  "Whuh...what hit me?" Megumi mumbled to
herself.

	"Hey, are you all right?"  Megumi's eyes finally focused enough to
see that it was Sayoko talking to her.  "You just fell over here on the
front step."

	"I'm okay, I think," Megumi replied, getting up.  She felt a bit
dizzy, but only for a moment.  "I must've tripped or something.  What
brings you out here, Sayoko?"

	"Oh!  Uh...Keiichi missed some important info in our last class, so
I thought I'd, umm...loan him my notes."

	Megumi thought it prudent not to mention that Sayoko didn't seem to
be carrying anything with her.  "He missed his last class today, huh?
Well, let's go in and see what's up."

	Urd was listlessly pushing dishes around a sink full of water when
she heard the door slide open again.  Before she could say anything, she
heard Megumi call out, "Hey, anybody home?"  A groan was the response
from Keiichi's room.

	"Oops," said Megumi in a quieter voice.  Urd stepped into the
hallway, a cup still in her hands.  "Another migraine?"  Urd nodded.

	"Maybe I should check--er, give Kei my notes later," whispered
Sayoko. "I'll see you later."

	As Sayoko left, Megumi carefully put down her bookbag, trying not to
make any noise.  "Well, I hope this headache doesn't last too long.  He
missed two days of class with that one last week."

	"Well," replied Urd, "I've given him some new medication.  We'll see
what happens."  She turned to go back to the sink.

	"Right," said Megumi, absently.  She opened her bag and began taking
out some books.  "By the way, where's Bell?"

	The cup hit the floor with a crash.

***