Episode 8: A Slight Touch of Chaos If you see me, I need your love, Serene, like the moon high above, Soft and peaceful as a newborn dove. What could possibly matter more to me Than your love? <<>> Tenchi squinted his eyes as the sun reached that certain position in the sky that allowed its bright rays to filter in through his windows. Tenchi didn't want to get out of bed. It was too early, and besides, he was bushed from yesterday's work in the carrot fields and sword training. Tenchi groaned and rolled over, slumping his bare arm across the bed. That was strange; his bed felt unusually warm and soft. Since when did beds have shoulders? "Mmm, Tenchi. I like you better this way." "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!" Ayeka rushed to Tenchi's door when she heard the scream. "Oh my, goodness! Lord Tenchi, are you all right?!" Sasami already stood at the door. "It's locked!" Suddenly, the door slammed open and Tenchi ran right into Sasami, falling on top of her. Tenchi gazed down in utter shock as Sasami blushed and half-said, half-giggled, "Good morning, Tenchi. Breakfast is ready." A sleepy Ryoko, still pulling her clothes on, put her hands on Tenchi's shoulders, oblivious to Ayeka's low growl. "Oh, come on, Tenchi. Let's go back to bed, hmm?" Tenchi stood up and whirled on her. "What in the hell were you doing in my room?!" Ryoko put a finger to her chin. "Don't you remember, Tenchi? You said that you would marry me last night; you do remember don't you?" Tenchi screamed and rushed to the kitchen. Ryoko laughed a mischievous laugh. Sasami's eyes were wide as she recovered herself. "Wow! Are you and Tenchi getting married?" Ayeka stood with her fists coiled in murderous anger. "Of course not, Sasami! A kind man like Tenchi would never choose a she-witch for his wife!" Ryoko looked at her with her hands behind her head and a look of false confusion. "But Ayeka, I thought that when two people love each other they go and get married. I never heard of someone falling in love with a dirt pile sporting a purple wig, unless of course that person was really desperate." Ayeka fumed. "You make him desperate!" Ryoko smiled devilishly. "'Desperate for what?' is the question." Ayeka stomped down the hall and pursued Tenchi as Sasami giggled. Grownups could be so silly sometimes. <<>> Tenchi ran full speed down the stairs and raced for the door. The only problem was: he wasn't moving anywhere. A mechanical arm had caught him by the back of his shirt collar which quickly pulled him into the broom closet underneath the stairs. Only it wasn't a broom closet. Tenchi was surrounded by a blackness through which hundreds of light beams flew. He was suddenly in his boxers and strapped to a strangely familiar machine with a light bulb crown adorning his head. Welcome to Washu's lab. "Hi!" Washu said cheerfully from behind a desk. A tongue depressor was inserted in Tenchi's mouth by the machine as Washu rose and said, "So, I hear that you got a little excitement this morning." Tenchi sighed and attempted to speak. "Thaht's one whae off puthing ith." Washu presented a small, apparently wooden device. "Put this next to your door on the inside. This way, no one can get into your room without knocking." Tenchi became worried. "Wathu, whath exathly amth I thooing here?" Washu smiled an anime smile. "I just want to collect some samples! Nothing to worry about! Nothing at all!" She cackled maniacally as a large robotic arm with sickle blades, hypodermic syringes filled with God-knows-what, and Q-Tips descended towards Tenchi. Tenchi's scream would have been heard for miles if it weren't for Washu's soundproof walls. <<>> Yosho walked down the shrine steps and smiled at the glittering lake and the beautiful morning sky. It had been about a month since the Tokyo incident, and all of the girls, except for Mihoshi and Kiyone, who had to return to Galaxy Police Headquarters, had opted to stay at the Tenchi residence. Washu had set up a subspace laboratory inside what used to be the house's broom closet, Ayeka and Sasami shared the guest bedroom, and Ryoko . . . Well, there was no sure way to tell where Ryoko would be at any one moment, but odds were that she'd be within five feet of Tenchi. Yosho laughed. What a rambunctious group of women! He wondered if it was too much for his grandson. Suddenly, as if on cue, Tenchi bolted out of the house and dashed up the shrine steps, almost colliding with his grandfather. "Tenchi?" Yosho asked worriedly. "Why are you running so fast?" Tenchi stopped, put his hands on his knees, and panted. "Washu . . . hide me from . . . Washu!" A voice lilted through the air, one that most Tenchi fans assert with incoming doom. "Oh, Tenchiiiiiiii . . ." Tenchi screamed and tried to run off again, but Yosho held him by the collar of his newly-retrieved shirt. "Who's there?" Washu appeared out of nowhere. "Hi! I was trying to find Tenchi, but it looks like you got to him first." Yosho smiled a knowing smile. "All right, what are you trying to pull, Washu?" Washu looked more innocent than a babe. "Pull? Nothing at all! Whatever gave you that idea." Tenchi suddenly stood up. "You keep that weird machine away from me!" Yosho seemed to remember something and then laughed. "Oh! So that's what 's been going on." Tenchi looked confused. "Huh?" Yosho put a suspiciously friendly hand on Tenchi's shoulder. "When I met Professor Washu, I was about your age, and she thought that I was a very interesting specimen; so she performed a few tests. It's really nothing to worry about." Tenchi face-faulted. "Have you seen that needle arm?!" Yosho smiled frighteningly and muttered under his breath. "Just let her do it, Tenchi. Trust me, there's no escape." Washu smiled pure evil. Suddenly, Ryoko appeared behind Washu and slapped her in the back of the head. Washu fell to the pavement as Ryoko stated, "Just what the hell do you think you're doing with my Tenchi?!" Washu stood up and dusted off her clothes. "Nothing more lewd than your little escapade this morning." Ryoko blushed heavily. "That's none of your business!" Washu smiled again. "However, I will lay off my experiments if you just promise me one thing." Ryoko snorted. "What?" Washu fluttered her eyelashes. "Just call me 'mom'!" Ryoko face-faulted. Washu had told her earlier that week that she was her mother and had proceeded to prove it by DNA testing, but she still held that possibility in the realm of disbelief. However, if it meant eliminating some of the competition . . . "Fine." "Super-kewl!" Washu mewed in a far too girlish voice. She walked down the steps toward her laboratory. "See you later, Tenchi." Tenchi had the look of inevitable fate on his face as his grandfather turned to him, confused. "Escapade? What escapade?" <<>> Mihoshi sighed and placed her tray of food down on one of the many circular tables in the GPHQ cafeteria. Where in the world had Kiyone gone? She munched on a french fry and looked at the TVs which were monitoring the different sections of the headquarters. When they had arrived, Kiyone had gone off to make her report and had told Mihoshi to meet her at their quarters. It had been two days since then, and Kiyone had yet to show herself. Mihoshi sniffled. Why would Kiyone abandon her like that? What did she do? What if Kiyone was in trouble? "Where are you, Kiyone?!" sobbed Mihoshi. Fountains of tears gushed from her eyes as many male GP officers tried to calm her down. <<>> Kiyone opened her eyes and blinked quickly, assailed as she was by a blinding light. Once her vision cleared, she discovered that she was lying down in a room that consisted entirely of high-intensity light panels. She made a grab for her GP pistol, but both it and it's holster were missing. How long had she been out? Kiyone rubbed her head. The last thing she remembered was making her report in the office when someone hit her from behind. "Hey!" she shouted. "Is anyone here?!" Her voice echoed off the walls of the large room, but there was no answer. Suddenly, a sound became faintly audible. Kiyone pressed her ear to the floor and quickly recognized the noise. Hyperdrive engines. So, she was on a spaceship. Kiyone sat Indian-style in the middle of the floor, clasped her orange-gloved hands around her boots, and sighed. What reason would someone have to do this? She had gotten clearance from headquarters before destroying the Bioroids. Had the conn officer blabbed? Kiyone rose again and examined the extremely small aperture between the light fixtures. That couldn't be right, unless . . . She knocked on the material. It was wooden. A Jurai warship? What could they want with her? <<>> "You are too stay away from Tenchi, you monstrous headhunter!" "Yeah right, like he wants to hang out with you, Princess Airhead." "That is simply enough! Begone with you!" "Shut up." "Make me." "Don't push me, princess." "Oh, so it's a fight you want, eh?" "You said it, not me." Tenchi sighed heavily as he made his way towards the vegetable storehouse. Ryoko and Ayeka were trailing a few feet behind him, arguing all the way, as they had been since that morning. Would they ever stop? Tenchi had been ignoring most of the confrontation as he opened the wooden door. Then he saw and heard two things at once. He saw a fattened Ryo-Ohki in the middle of a pile of empty baskets and heard Ryoko scream, "That's it, bitch!" A plasma bolt flew at the violet-haired princess which she quickly blocked with her force shield. However, the bolt slammed straight into the vegetable shed, detonating it on impact. Both shocked women looked as the debris landed and the dust cleared. There stood a smoking Tenchi and Ryo-Ohki, Ryo-Ohki knocked out cold, Tenchi looking very angry. Both women bowed. "Oops." Tenchi through down his basket. "That's it." Tenchi had soon gathered everyone in the den along with a massive pile of cleaning supplies. All of the "Tenchi family", Ryoko, Ayeka, Sasami, Washu, Yosho, and Ryo-Ohki, looked expectantly at him as he announced, "All right, I've really had enough of all the fighting." All of the women looked downcast as he continued. "So I got to thinking: 'Why are they doing this?', and I came up with the solution. You obviously have nothing better to do, so I think it's time for Spring Cleaning." All were confused. "Spring Cleaning?" Ryoko cocked her head to the side. "What's that?" Tenchi smiled a workman's smile. "It's when everyone in a family works together to clean up a house." He frowned. "And in our case, rebuild it." Ryoko smiled. "You know I'm all for 'working together' with you, Tenchi." Yosho handed her a broom. "Actually, you would be best suited for sweeping the shrine steps while Tenchi repairs the storeroom." Ayeka laughed. Ryoko frowned and threw down the broom. "Like hell I wil-" She noticed Tenchi's disapproving frown. She reluctantly picked up the sweeping tool. "Okay." Tenchi handed out the rest of the chores. Ayeka and Sasami would vacuum and dust the rooms of the house, Ryo-Ohki would help out Ryoko, Washu would mop and generally clean up the kitchen, and Noboyuki would clean out the basement. Yosho decided to straighten up the shrine. "Okay," Tenchi said after handing out tools and chores. "Let's get to it!" <<>> It was a gift to fly. Ryoko often took it for granted, given that she could accomplish this feat at will, but it was still a marvelous gift. And since Ryoko always flew or floated to the shrine at the top of the hill, she had never taken into account how long the temple stairway was. It had been an hour of drudgery, sweeping those steps from the top to the bottom, and she couldn't even see the house yet. She sighed and set aside the broom for a moment to rest. She wondered how Ryo-Ohki was doing at the other end. That was when she looked up and spazzed out. She could see the black spires of Ryo-Ohki's spaceship form over the trees. And judging from the jolting earthquakes, she seemed to be firing at something. Ryoko literally flew down the steps and saw that Ryo-Ohki was shooting at the steps and blocking its laser at the same time with a force shield. The impact caused shock waves that blew the dust from the steps with great alacrity. Ryoko smiled and shouted in encouragement. "Good job, Ryo-Ohki!" Ryo-Ohki was now distracted. "Myia?" The spaceship/cabbit forgot to activate the shield and a laser blast punched into the shrine steps, blowing a large section to smithereens. Ryoko stood dumbfounded as she watched Ryo-Ohki transform back and give her a mean look. She then felt Yosho's hand on her shoulder. "Guess who's rebuilding the steps." <<>> Ayeka looked strangely at the vacuum cleaner. "I order you to clean this room!" Surprisingly, the vacuum cleaner didn't budge. Ayeka was frustrated. If this contraption didn't obey vocal commands, then how did one operate it? "Sasami!" she called. Sasami poked her head in the doorway of the master bedroom. "What's up, Ayeka?" Ayeka was slightly embarrassed. "How do you operate this machine?" Sasami pointed at the machine. "Do you see that switch on top?" Ayeka gave it a quick glance. "Yes." Sasami smiled. "That's the 'on-switch', okay?" She then resumed dusting the upper hallway. Ayeka looked at the vacuum disdainfully. A device that required manual labor? How . . . primitive. She reluctantly flipped the switch while leaning on the vacuum's handle. VOOM! The noise of the loud motor startled Ayeka so that she, expecting the thing to blow, threw herself to the floor. In doing so, she accidentally hit her head on the metal underside of the bed. She cursed in Juraian and immediately stood straight up in reaction. That knocked the live vacuum over, and it caught hold of her kimono. She screamed and tried to fight the vacuum for control of her dress. "Give that back, you horrible machine!" As she continued to tug, Sasami stood in the doorway, unable to assist her flailing sister for she herself was dying of laughter. Ayeka's kimono started slipping from her shoulders. Desperate to maintain some level of royal dignity, she lunged for the handle and flicked the switch off. The kimono-eating mechanical monster died at last. Sasami was still laughing as the undid the latch on the bottom of the vacuum and started fishing Ayeka's newly dustified kimono. "Jeez, Ayeka. Maybe you'd better do the dusting." <<>> 'This shouldn't happen to average, everyday kids like me.' Tenchi thought as he hammered a nail into one of the pieces of timber that would make up the blown-up wall facing the shrine. 'Well, then again I'm not exactly normal.' It was a monstrous task: rebuilding the food storage shed, but at least the entire thing hadn't been blown to smithereens. Most of the inner wall remained, as well as at least half of the two that connected with it. The wall that Tenchi was rebuilding, however, would take more than a week if he continued to work by himself. He sighed and looked into the setting sun. Was it really worth it to keep all these women around? He then smiled. Of course it was. The loving Ryoko, the beautiful Ayeka, the bright Sasami, the intelligent Washu . . . Tenchi looked towards the appearing stars. He wouldn't mind if Kiyone or Mihoshi stopped by for a visit once in a while. 'Wow.' Tenchi thought as he continued his work. 'Life sure has turned around for me.' <<>> Washu and Noboyuki had encountered problems with their assigned tasks as well. Washu has slipped on the wet floor, and Noboyuki had managed to bury himself under one of the comic book shelves in the basement. Both were muttering a low chorus, "Ow, ow, ow, ow . . ." <<>> Kiyone was about to become bored out of her mind. How long did they intend on keeping her in this weird cell? Until she cracked? She laughed maniacally. Not likely. Suddenly, the Juraian High Guard burst into the room. Kiyone barely had time to gasp before they knocked her out cold with a blow from their staffs and dragged her off into the ship. Disclaimer: This is a work of fan fiction and uses characters and situations from the Tenchi Muyo TV series, copyrighted under Pioneer. Also, some characters may come from the No Need For Tenchi graphic novel series, copyright Viz Comics. I take no credit for the base characters and plot, but all developments as of the time frame of my story are of my own design. If by some strange chance my plot is parallel to another author's fan fiction, I wish to be notified. For comments and information, E-mail me at bkvhw@earthlink.net Author's Comments: The Spring Cleaning Saga has begun! (insert Washu's maniacal laughter here) Also, for those of you who are wondering if this story seems to be my personal remake of the series, it's not. I am going to reveal why everything is so wierd in Episode 16: Ryoko Awakens. This is going somewhere, trust me! ^_' Oh, by the way, from now on I'm going to start putting previews of the next episodes from the characters' viewpoints on my fanfics, kind of like it was done on Shin-Tenchi. Just blot the weird country tune out of your mind and you might survive it. Washu: "On the next episode of Lighthawk Legend, I actually make a mistake! This is obviously a plot-hole, but who am I to complain? I actually get Tenchi in this episode too! Or do I? And why does everyone look like a cabbit?! What in God's name did I do this time?!!" Coming Soon: TENCHI MUYO: LIGHTHAWK LEGEND, Episode 9: "The Ryo-Ohki Syndrome"