This work is derived from Characters and Situations that are Copyright
and/or Trademark AIC, and Pioneer LDCA, all public or commercial use of
this material would require the very unlikely permission of the original
copyright holders.
The ideas projected in this work are strictly the product of the
imagination of the author, inevitably reflecting his mind, and should in
no way be taken to reflect on the originals from which they are derived.
	This story deals with adult subject matter, and has adult content. It
is not, however, explicitly pornographic and is not written for erotic
entertainment. If that's what you're looking for, look elsewhere.
	Continuity and time of this story are close to Manatsu no Eve: Tenchi
Movie II, further comments follow the story.

Hitsuyoo na Uso
Necessary Lies

	Mihoshi desperately tried to keep her eyes focused as impressions
flooded into her mind, seemingly disconnected, from countless continua.
That she was not hopelessly insane was a tribute to the strength of her
heritage as daughter of a goddess. That she had any anchor at all in
this reality was a tribute to the steadiness of her partner Kiyone.
	She longed for the distraction of a soap opera, an anime, a video game,
anything. If there was one thing that she had to fear in life, it was
being forced to stand watch. Not even her beloved Kiyone understood the
terrors what awaited her conscious mind when she was idle. No one, it
seemed, was able to understand why she must either sleep the sleep of
dreams, or keep on something, anything. Now, she resisted slipping into
dreams, and her mind fragmented.
	A minute piece of Mihoshi-consciousness materialized in one of the
countless hells created by sentient minds. These places of the mind
were, of course, mental constructs. While they were quite real, it would
be a mistake to take them literally; or to mistake them for physical
places. She recognized the center of the particular hell she entered
instantly, for it bore a remarkable resemblance to the interior of the
late starship Souja. The spirit that reigned in that hell spoke.
	"Ah, Mihoshi, Detective First Class. I called and you came" He
chuckled, "You seek the truth about Ryouko and Washu? Well then, let me
give you a key" 
	In her mind, in an unknown tongue, a fragment of verse took form.
	Moments later, Mihoshi's consciousness slipped through the fissure in
that sundered hall, for it was exactly as it had been at the moment of
it's extinction. Outside, there was an endless burning plain, worshipful
golems solemnly bowed to the great, bat winged figure of a naked woman,
meditating over the prostrate figure of a young man.
	"Ryouko san, what are you doing here? I thought you were still alive?"
	"I am a Ryouko that learned what you seek to know. Be warned"
	One of the golems gibbered: "Oh, yes there's more. She is our Queen,
daughter of a hellish conception, and worthy of our infernal adoration.
You want to know who her father is? I'll tell..hehehehe, yes I'll
tell.Aiiiiiii!"
	Fire lanced from the eyes of the Demon Queen Ryouko, slicing the golem
in half.
	The young man prostrate at Ryouko's feet turned to face her. It was
Tenchi's face.
	"I am a Tenchi that chose to serve this mistress, my motives were not
pure"
	"But you are not the real Tenchi?"
	"There are many Tenchis. I am one that must suffer at the feet of his
mistress"
	Another voice intruded.
	"Mihoshi! First Class Detective Mihoshi, your attention please"
	It was the voice of Yukinojo, the Police Shuttle's autopilot. Mihoshi
snapped back to a single reality.
	"Yes, Yukinojo?"
	"Prepare to receive subspace packet"
	Mihoshi pressed the correct switch. There was a loud clunk as an object
materialized inside an armored receptacle, with considerable residual
kinetic energy.
	"Subspace packet received", Yukinojo sighed, and shut himself down to
standby status.
 	Mihoshi opened the receptacle, it resembled the breech of an old
fashioned chemical propellant canon. The capsule inside bore an even
closer resemblance to an artillery shell. The seal on the capsule sensed
the living DNA of it's intended recipient and fell open in her hands.
Inside was a standard Jurai Security Services data archiving crystal.
The date code on the label was an almost incredible five thousand years
old. Along with the crystal was a slip of paper bearing the signet of
Lady Funaho in her role as head of the Holy Council.
	The police woman turned the crystal over in her hand, recalling the
words of Jurai's Second Queen.
	"Jurai needs to know who this Ryouko really is. Washu claims she is a
synthetic being, and yet claims she can't be duplicated, we frankly
don't believe her. When Washu left the old Royal Academy, we found
someone had altered the encryption codes on the relevant surveillance
files. You, young lady, have the confidence of Miss Washu. 
	Your grandfather is counting on you"
	Mihoshi looked at the chronometer on the instrument panel. Her watch
would not end for another four hours. She casually verified that Kiyone
was still asleep in the crew quarters, and then she slipped the data
crystal into place in Yukinojo's archival reader. For the next half hour
she fiddled at the keyboard in a manner that might have seemed random,
trying various probes, and tests.
	By the end of that half hour, she knew that the public key encryption
used on the data crystal would require many millions of years to
decipher, even with the resources of the Holy Council of Jurai. It would
seem that Lady Funaho had asked for the impossible. It was with a shade
of relief that she started to put aside the crystal; then she recalled
the vision she had experienced earlier.
	"Yukinojo, I want full security shield, voice input only"
	"Yes, Ma'am"
	A silence fell over Mihoshi's workstation, as it was isolated in it's
own subspace pocket for the duration of the security procedure.
Technically, she was leaving the shuttle unwatched, but Yukinojo was in
charge, and he was much more conscious than was typical of automatons
produced by Galactic technology. She adjusted a microphone, and spoke
with perfect diction a series of words in an unknown language, though it
did occur to her that it sounded a bit like the "Ingriisu" that her
Earth hosts made such a fuss about studying. From the rhythm, it was
obviously some sort of verse.
	"Tyger, tyger, burning bright
	In the forests of the night,
	What immortal hand or eye
	Could frame thy fearful symmetry?"
	A virtual screen containing indices materialized before her eyes. She
had achieved access to the data archived in the crystal. According to
the index, it contained security dossiers, surveillance video, and DNA
profiles.
	A header on the dossiers read: "Known associates of Hakubi Washu"
	The DNA profiles section had the same tag.
	The surveillance videos were dated over a period of about two years,
but had thankfully been edited down to only "Significant activities.
Hakubi residence and laboratory"
	Mihoshi looked again at the dossiers. Most of the names were
meaningless, not surprising after five thousand years; but three were
not unknown. One of them was, of course, Hakubi Washu. Another  was
named as "Jurai Kagato". She grasped the implication of that instantly.
That could only mean that Kagato had been a blood relative of the Jurai
Royal family. `Dangerous secrets', a timid corner of her mind whispered.
She recalled being told that there was no known genetic profile on
Kagato, and the being of that name that had perished at the hands of
Masaki Tenchi had left no organic traces.
	The third name Mihoshi recognized was Jurai Azusa.
	"Mihoshi"
	"Yes, Yukinojo?"
	"Your watch is over, time to wake up Detective Kiyone"
	"Deactivate security shield"
	The normal shipboard background noises returned. Fans sighed, power
circuits crackled, various indicators beeped and hummed. Mihoshi got up
from the pilot's station and, taking the data archive crystal with her,
made her way back to the living quarters. There she found Kiyone sound
asleep. The dark haired senior officer looked so peaceful, it seemed a
shame to wake her, but a mere touch accomplished the deed.
	The moment she awakened, Kiyone sat up, eyes wide.
	"Is everything alright? What went wrong this time? Mihoshi? Oh, it's
time. You're on schedule?"
	Having fully awakened, the senior officer stood up, stripped off her
nightclothes, and stepped into the shower, which started automatically.
She spoke over the sound of raining water.
	"Mihoshi, what's that data crystal you're carrying around?"
	"Oh, nothing, really. Just something they had Jurai Security send me
for busywork"
	Busywork? Subspace transfer of that crystal probably cost more than the
defense budget of a minor planet.
	Kiyone did not press her junior on that. She understood quite well the
incredible feats of insight that the childlike mind of her ever so
dependent Mihoshi was capable. She also knew that with her special
talents and tools, the seemingly helpless woman was often involved in
dangerous Galactic intrigues that a career officer would do well to
avoid. Consider, she thought to herself, our current resident assignment
on that backwater Earth place. On paper it was a career ending dead end,
but Kiyone knew of no greater nexus of hidden power in the civilized
Galaxy; dangerous.
	By the time Kiyone emerged, drying herself, Mihoshi was already in her
bunk, drowsily turning the crystal over in her slender fingers.
Shrugging, Kiyone pulled on her body armor and duty uniform, and made
her way to the cockpit.
	As soon as the senior officer was gone, Mihoshi pulled out her
hyper-cube. Storing the data crystal, she adjusted the cube so that it
projected certain visuals on the overhead. The projection was originally
a view from Mihoshi's hip as she walked into Washu's biology lab back on
Earth. Mihoshi herself did not know how she could walk in and out of
Washu's subspaces as if they were open rooms of a single building, but
it happened.
	In this instance, the diminutive scientist, looking like nothing more
than a guilty adolescent, was backed up against a display console,
trying ineptly to conceal her work from the unexpected visitor. Mihoshi
turned off the audio, she knew it well enough anyway.
	"Washu-chan, are you sure the Masu are Ryouko's father? Sasami says
they looked like a female, and that's the way it looked to me"
	"Don't be more of a fool than you have to be, Mihoshi. The Masu were
merely taking the form dictated by Ryo-ohki's desire to show her love
for Tenchi. There's nothing to it. I assure you. The Masu are Ryouko's
father"
	"If you say so..", Mihoshi had responded dubiously.
	Mihoshi froze the display, right at the moment of those words. Just to
the left of the scientist's hip was an array of centimeter wide rainbow
stripes, headed with the Jurai glyphs for "Ryouko". There were probably
not more than three or four scientists in the entire galaxy that could
understand that display at a glance, yet it was easy for this flighty
young detective. She mentally compared it with other DNA profiles she
was privy to. There was no doubt that Washu was the mother, no one had
seriously doubted that, but just as it appeared, she certainly was no
clone.
	What was startling was the similarity to Aeka-dono's profile. The
connection was obvious, Ryouko was fairly closely related to the
Princess, perhaps as close as a first cousin, or even a half sister. She
certainly didn't get that from Washu. The scientist's DNA showed no
connection to Jurai's Royalty within the last ten generations, and
certainly not in the maternal line. On the other hand, Mihoshi knew that
her own profile showed a close relationship to Washu, which meant that
she was herself related to Ryouko. This was getting complicated. Could
Ryouko be a lost Jurai Princess?
	The hyper-cube slipped from Mihoshi's fingers, and she slipped into a
blissful universe of happy dreams. In those dreams she returned to the
alternate reality where she had been married to Tenchi-dono. It had
always piqued her that she had been inside that reality so briefly, and
had never had the peace to remember being with him. It had not been a
terribly happy world for her, and it did not escape her consciousness
that that was the best possible world for her and Tenchi together. That
had been one of many reasons for her giving up on Tenchi.
	This time she began dreaming the dream she had hoped for. They lay on
the marriage bed, his perfect body next to hers. Their daughter Sasami
was not yet conceived. Her goddess vision told her this would be the
night of conception. In that world, Tenchi might have been a mere salary
man, but even so, he had the body of a god. They began to slide
together, into intimate embrace, her body swayed with ecstasy, and kept
swaying.
	Kiyone was gently, or maybe not so gently, rocking her awake.
	"Mihoshi, Mihoshi. Time to wake up. It's your watch"
	Mihoshi blushed intensely, hoping Kiyone would not notice her state of
excitement. She stumbled out of bed and turned shyly away from her
superior, as she stripped for her shower, realizing too late that she
had slept in her uniform and body armor. Mihoshi found relief in the
warm caress of the shower. She was surprised, on emerging, to find
Kiyone had picked up her uniform and run it through the cleaner. Kiyone
handed her the clothes without comment. During watch period, duty was
the only admissible consideration.
	Dutifully, she made her way to the cockpit. There, once her watch was
established, she retrieved the crystal from the hyper-cube, and resumed
her investigations. 
	The first archives she opened were the DNA profiles for the two Jurai
Royals. Just as she had suspected, the profiles of the two men were very
similar. Royal inbreeding had produced a very narrow and distinctive
profile. It would take a detailed study to distinguish their offspring,
but it certainly looked like one of them must be the source of Ryouko's
paternal DNA. Wouldn't it be funny, she giggled to herself, if Ryouko
and Aeka were sisters?
	Eschewing the tedium and hard work of detailed paternal DNA study,
Mihoshi skipped to the dossiers. Azusa's had no big surprises. Mihoshi
was used to the tawdry details of personal dossiers. For a future
Emperor of over half the Galaxy, he was a pretty ordinary fellow. As a
matter of fact, if he hadn't been Crown Prince, he probably never would
have gotten into the Academy. Just one titillating fact, he liked his
girls na‹ve and innocent; and one disturbing fact in regard to his
character, he relied on Kagato to procure them.
	Kagato was another matter. His parentage was blocked out, even in this
high security archive. Mihoshi speculated; that could only mean that if
he were acknowledged, he would be in the line of succession. So, why
wasn't he to be acknowledged? Physically fit, no criminal convictions,
with an astronomically high IQ, he was a shoe in for the Science
Academy. Convicted or not, Jurai Security Services had a long record of
his criminal dealings as a hacker and procurer. He had been traced by
security in over a dozen illegal penetrations of Jurai defense
computers. At the age of fourteen he had been rejected for initiation
into the Jurai Mysteries, when examination had revealed his sociopathic
character: that was the dark stain he bore from that early date, and
that was why he was blocked from the succession.
	Mihoshi moved on to the surveillance logs, skipping to the last entry
for Azusa. Her plan was to work backwards from his last presence.
	Surveillance video, jerky, vague and pixilated from extensive
compression, showed a teenage looking Washu, with a handsome young Jurai
male in tow. They were entering an ordinary looking efficiency
apartment, of slightly dated looking style. Both were a bit rumpled, and
in dress uniform of the old Academy, Washu looked fairly intoxicated.
The next view, in the bedroom, showed Washu coyly ducking behind a
screen to strip and enter her bath. In the background, young Azusa
casually removed his clothes and got into the bed, waiting.
	Despite her professionalism, Mihoshi blushed. The young Prince was very
ready. In a single leap, Washu bounded onto the bed, but it was an
unexpected Washu. Mihoshi thought she had understood Washu's cat girl
heritage, but to see the woman in the full flush of a cat girl's passion
was still startling. Mihoshi turned on the audio as she watched the
Prince's terrified reaction to the sudden transformation of his formerly
coy date.
	"Oh, m-m-my g-g-gods, a-a-a k-k-kat slave in heat..."
	Azusa covered his front with a pillow as he backed out of the room.
	Mihoshi skipped backward through the video files, only to confirm what
she now darkly suspected. Azusa's last visit was his one and only
attempt at an intimate encounter with the scientist. She then skipped
forward to the next time Washu was not alone.
	It was only a few hours later, and the trembling Washu still looked
more than half the cat girl as she tried to work in her laboratory. In
the background a door opened, and a familiar crab-shaped noise maker
sounded off.
	"Go away, I'm busy"
	"Professor, I came to apologize for my cousin's behavior last night"
	A tall and very handsome young man stepped into the lab. He was blond,
red eyed, and wearing a stylish indigo satin cape that draped dashingly
on his lanky frame. This was unmistakably young Kagato. Mihoshi
dismissed the term "cousin" as mere form, telling nothing of his actual
relationship to the Crown Prince.
	Kagato walked up behind Washu, who was pretending to ignore him. She
was very tense and breathing hard. He rested his large hands on her
shoulders, massaging them slightly. His hands relaxed down onto her
collarbone. She whirled on him.
	"Don't" She whispered insincerely.
	"Why not?" He bent over and kissed her, first on her lips, then on the
nape of her neck.
	"Because you are a student, and I am your teacher, young Kagato"
	It was too late for that. The cat girl passion had swept away Washu's
caution. She took the much larger man down, and frantically tore at both
their clothes. Soon they were coupled atop his fine velvet indigo cape.
She was on top, and yowling at the top of her lungs; he was below,
smiling and whispering to himself. Mihoshi adjusted the playback to
filter for his whispers.
	"Oh, yes, my kitten. You are at least the avatar of a goddess, perhaps
even one greater than the cat goddess you appear. What will this passion
buy me?"
	Mihoshi had seen enough. Fast forwarding through the mechanics of human
passion, she watched the fiend leave in a flourish of bows. Skipping to
the next time Kagato appeared on the surveillance, she found the student
and the Professor behaving stiffly correct, as if nothing had ever
happened between them. Skipping to the last entry for Kagato, she
noticed that it was also the last entry for the entire record. It showed
Kagato alone in the lab, typing rapidly at the computer. A side data
stream showed what he was entering. It was code for a virus that would
terminate a Jurian AI. The man hit the enter key, and the surveillance
AI that had created this archive crystal terminated.
	She backed the recording to the last previous entry for Kagato. The
video showed Washu holding a small toddler with golden cat's eyes and
pale blue-white hair. In the toddler's wrists and throat were prominent
glowing red cabochon gems. Kagato walked in.
	"What, have you bestowed the talismans of your power on a mere girl?"
	"I am a girl. What is wrong with that? She is your own daughter"
	"Maudlin sentimentality" he sneered.
	"Get out", she said that almost devoid of passion, as if she were
drained.
	He complied.
	Mihoshi let the recording run.
	"There, there, little Ryouko. No one's going to hurt you"
	Washu was preparing a large hypo. She talked as she worked.
	"No one will be able to harm your perfect body, once my little Masu
have done their job. You see, little Ryouko, these Masu are modified.
They are keyed to respond to your DNA alone. Once they have assimilated,
they will protect your body forever. They will be your link to Ryo-ohki,
too. Yes, the same Masu, keyed to you, already make up your Ryo-ohki"
	She held the toddler down and made the injection, then hugged the
crying away.
	"Forget that man. These Masu are your real father, because they will
protect you. Yes, yes, that man is no father to you"
	Mihoshi reexamined the headers for the surveillance files, and found a
long series labeled "Unknown Infant".  The first entry in that series
was exactly what she had expected. A very gravid Washu had arranged a
birthing chair, and several medical automatons. The beginning of the
video showed the very moment that the top of the infant's head appeared
in Washu's distended vulva. Damn the literality of that AI! Why hadn't
it flagged this scene for human intervention? Reflecting, Mihoshi
realized that this particular AI had long ago been subverted by Washu
herself. How the Archive Crystal had been left to fall back into the
hands of Jurai Security Services was entirely another question, one
which Mihoshi wasn't being asked to address.
	Human childbirth can be a fascinating event, and also an intimidating
one. Despite her flightiness, Mihoshi was firmly in the fascinated camp.
She sat and watched the whole messy procedure, as the woman sweated and
moaned, pushing the baby out of her body. Robotic hands tenderly took
delivery, clamping the cord, cleaning, cutting. The robots patiently
waited for the afterbirth as they cleaned and wrapped the baby, handing
her to her exhausted mother.
	For the first time it occurred to Mihoshi, of course Ryouko had been
born, and had been born before she had assimilated any Masu. Ryouko had
a navel. A navel is a scar from the detachment of the cord.
	Mihoshi had seen enough. Besides, she knew it was already coming up on
the end of her watch. She took the data archive crystal out of Yukinojo,
and placed it in her hyper cube. She made her way back to the crew
quarters and woke up Kiyone. This time Mihoshi remembered to change out
of uniform and into her pajamas. Kiyone left, and Mihoshi, lying abed,
placed herself in a trance.
	Summoning her own small power, she summoned her link with her mother,
the goddess of fortune of a small world half a galaxy away. With her
mother's help, she expanded her goddess vision to encompass the
consequences of two divergent acts.
	Disclosure of Ryouko's paternity to the Jurai was one option. In that
direction yawned the gaping mouths of hell. A hundred Ryoukos fell
headlong into eternal horror. Jurai assaulted the power nexus that was
the Masaki household, and more than half the Galaxy fell into a new dark
age.
	In the other direction, a hundred Ryoukos enjoyed a hundred divergent
fates.
	Mihoshi snapped out of her trance. The choice had been made. She took
the crystal and made her way to the cockpit. Kiyone looked up in
surprise, tempted to reprimand her junior for coming on deck in her
pajamas. Then she saw the troubled look on Mihoshi's face.
	Mihoshi inserted the crystal into Yukinojo.
	"Kiyone? Ryouko does not need to know who her father is? Jurai does not
need to know who Ryouko's father is?"
	"Kami-sama has given vision on this to your goddess within?"
	Mihoshi nodded.
	"I need to forget"
	Mihoshi keyed Yukinojo to fill the data archive crystal with thousands
of hours of classic soap operas from six thousand years ago. Then she
slumped to the floor.
	Kiyone struggled to pick up her partner and carried her back to her
bunk. The watch mission had no significance to this. She took off her
own body armor and climbed into bed with the younger woman. Forget your
squeamish or indelicate  thoughts, she said to herself, forget the
trivial demands of the State. This young goddess of Synchronicity just
needs to be held against the darkness. 
	Mihoshi was forgetting, crucial elements of her mind were unwinding in
time. The traces of the last three watches were smoothing away from her
cerebral cortex. A splinter of her consciousness drifted into a familiar
hell. The Demon Queen Ryouko was weeping. A wailing was heard from the
grounded wreck of the Souja.
	"I'm sorry, Miss Ryouko"
	"Sorry? These are tears of joy. Thank you, Mihoshi-megami-sama"
	"Thank me? I don't remember. Is that OK?"
	Mihoshi looked down and she could see that the Demon Queen's tears were
dissolving holes in the fabric of this hell.
	The supplicant Tenchi spoke.
	"Thanks to you for setting us free"

OWARI.

	This story reflects several evolutionary changes in this Author's
thinking about Ryouko's nature and origins. We certainly can not rely on
Washu, who is a known habitual liar. Though I have been known to advance
elaborate biological theories to reconcile biological reality with the
assertions of OAV Washu, her assertion that the Masu are Ryouko's father
is absurd on it's face, given that the Masu are not a carbon based, much
less DNA based, lifeform.
	While it is possible to postulate techniques for Washu to generate a
genetically unique child exclusively from her own genetic makeup, the
simplest, and therefore the most likely explanation is that she did it
the old fashioned way. 
	Ultimately several items pushed me over the edge into writing this
story. One was the Tenchi Encyclopaedia's characterization of Washu's
version as her  "claim". Another was the simple notation that navels are
birth scars, and Ryouko has a navel. Coincidentally, both Ryouko and
Washu use the term "umareru" in reference to Ryouko in OAV ep. 6; that
term unequivocally means "born". Finally, I wanted a vehicle to tie in
Mihoshi.
	OAV Mihoshi gets a bad rap, in part due to TV Mihoshi. In the OAV, the
GP section chief describes Mihoshi as an excellent detective, the best,
if cost is not a concern. IMHO, it is clear from the remarks of Washu
and Lady Funaho that Mihoshi is a party and a player in some of the
deepest intrigues in the Galaxy. That and more you should have found
written into this story.
 
Text CopyrightO1999, Gregory W. Matteson. <matteson@jps.net>
Characters are Copyright and/or Trademark AIC and Pioneer LDCA