Episode 9:  The Ryo-Ohki Syndrome

    It was another fine morning at the Masaki residence. At least, it would
have been if it weren't for what was about to happen.
    Washu was an enigma. How horrible she could be at times, dragging people
into her lab, blackmailing her own daughter, creating awful super weapons.
Despite all this, as she walked down the stairs to her lab, wearing nothing
but a really long T-shirt and rubbing her eyes as she had just woken up, she
looked innocent and beautiful.
    Washu opened up what used to be the closet door and commanded her work
cushion to appear. The apparatus floated above the ground and bounced
slightly as Washu slumped into it and began calling up data charts on
transparent, floating screens.
    "Hmm . . ." she mused as she focused on a computer screen. She tried to
hold back a sleepy yawn, since she really was excited about the outcome of
yesterday's experiment, but she failed and almost killed herself coughing
the unwelcome breath of air out of her lungs. "Boy, I feel smart. (cough)"
    The screens flickered with unbelievable speed, and yet somehow Washu
understood them all. One of Washu's many captive organisms twittered from
somewhere in the depths of the lab.
    Suddenly, Washu clapped her hands in excitement. "Ah, yes!" She rolled
from side to side in her cushion, clasping her hands together and holding
them against her chest. "I've finally done it: Ryo-Ohki Version 2.0!"
    She clicked some more commands into her computer and then hit "Enter".
    "Now, let's get a look at it."
    The screen flashed and beeped even more rapidly than before. Calculus
equations were one thing, creating a life form took a lot of processing
speed.
    However, after about 15 minutes of calculating, Washu began to suspect
that something was wrong. "It shouldn't take this long to pull up a preview
image. Did that Internet service buy me a Windows software package instead
of the Mac that I paid it for?"
    She called up a status check. It read: "Ryo-Ohki software program
updated. Information received. AutoConstruct feature activated."
    Washu groaned. Not only was it Windows, but it had started constructing
the new version on its own. Suddenly, an alarm went off.
    "What?!" Washu exclaimed. Something else was wrong. The software was
never designed to handle the size of the data that she had input.
    Speakers blared, "Systems crash! Systems crash!"
    "No! Dammit!" Washu screamed, bashing her computer.
    Tenchi opened the door to her lab. "What's going on, Little Washu?"
    Washu whirled on him. "Close that door! I can't contain it if-"

<<>>

    Washu yawned heavily. This project was really wearing her out. So far,
her system had shown unusual difficulty in processing the needed
information. She lay back in her chair and ran her hand through her long
green and brown spiky hair. When would technology work as fast as her mind
could? Probably never.
    Tenchi opened the door to her lab. He smiled a handsome smile that made
the white hair on his cheeks fluff up in a cute manner. "When are you ever
going to stop getting up in the middle of the night to go check your
experiments, Washu?"
    Washu turned her head in his direction quickly and smiled. "I'm sorry,
Tenchi, but I just had to get this part done."
    Tenchi nodded. "It's okay. Just come back to bed soon." He smiled a warm
smile again. "I miss you already."
    Washu worked inhumanly fast on her keyboard and was done in five
minutes. How lucky she had been to marry Tenchi. His kind personality, those
toned muscles, those pretty brown eyes, that soft white fur . . . She almost
drooled on herself before she realized that she had not yet turned off her
computer. She hurriedly hit the "Shut Down" key and rushed out of her lab,
long T-shirt flapping behind her. The last thing that displayed on the
screen was "Ryo-Ohki V.2.0 program paused."

<<>>

    Tenchi leaned over and put his arm around the sleeping Washu's bare
shoulders. What an extraordinary wife she had turned out to be, playing the
peacemaker in the household where the other girls refused to leave, and
still running her experiments. He kissed her deftly on the cheek. He was a
lucky man indeed.

<<>>

    The computer in Washu's lab blipped on all of a sudden. The monitor
appeared, and on its screen was a distressed-looking, very different Washu.
Her unusual magenta hair fluttered as she finished saying, "-the effect of
the-"
The computer blipped off.

<<>>

    "Breakfast is ready, everyone." Sasami cheerfully shouted. The members
of the family all crowded downstairs and took their respective seats at the
table while Sasami passed out a strange dish that seemed to involve
chocolate.
    "What is this, Sasami?" Ayeka questioned. "I didn't think that chocolate
is a breakfast food."
    Tenchi smiled and stabbed the entree with his fork. "These are chocolate
pancakes."
    A chorus of "ohs" came from everyone at the table and they all began
eating.
    "So," Kiyone began. "How was 'last night'?"
    Tenchi blushed heavily. "Umm, well-"
    Washu smiled. "It's really none of your business."
    Ryoko frowned. "Like it was your business to snatch Tenchi in the first
place."
    Ayeka sighed. "For once, I agree with you."
    Tenchi scowled. "Please don't start this again, guys."
    Both gave him a withering look.
    "You still haven't explained why you picked her, Tenchi." Ryoko whined.
    "Yes, that's all that we're waiting for. Just tell us and we'll be on
our way." Ayeka joined in.
    Tenchi stopped eating. "If you two can't be satisfied with the fact that
I've chosen someone special, then you don't deserve to know why I chose my
wife."
    Both girls looked downcast in a weary sort of way. The wedding had been
at least a month ago, and neither girl had managed to extract any sort of
reason from Tenchi. Granted, they might have been asking too much at first,
but now he barely even talked to them. He didn't even like to be around
Ryoko and Ayeka.
    After breakfast, Tenchi walked outside with Washu and Ryoko and Ayeka
didn't follow. What was the use? It was obvious that Tenchi was far too
annoyed with them to give them the time of day, much less the reason for his
choice.
They both walked out of the room in a very sad, heavy gait. When Tenchi and
Washu's new life had begun, their lives had ended. Painfully.

    Tenchi sat down next to the lake with a sigh and picked up a pebble from
the shore. The early morning clouds shone a brilliant pink and the rising
sun still looked red from the horizon spectrum effect. Washu sat down next
to him and leaned her head on his shoulder (she stayed mostly in Washu-san
form these days).
    "What's the matter?" she asked, already knowing the answer.
    Tenchi gazed blankly at the horizon. "Should I tell them, Little Washu?"
    Washu smiled. She wasn't little in any respect nowadays, but she still
liked Tenchi's pet name for her. "I don't know. Do you think that you
should?"
    Tenchi put his hand to his forehead. "I really can't decide. I mean,
this must sound silly, but I told myself before I even chose you to be my
bride that I wouldn't explain it to the others, that they would have to
assume that I put a lot of thought into that decision and chose the girl who
I felt I could spend the rest of my life with."
    Washu cocked her head to the side. "Isn't it that simple?"
    Tenchi sighed. "No, it isn't. I can't put into words how much I love
you, I can barely even describe it myself. It's as if my love for you is the
size of the Earth and I can only put my understanding on what I can see of
it from one standpoint."
    Washu blushed. "You don't have to tell them that."
    Tenchi looked confused. "What?"
    Washu shook her head. "That's not the answer they're looking for. They
just want closure, Tenchi. They've asked 'Is that your final answer?' and
they're waiting for you to respond, 'Yes it is, Regis.' All you have to do
is explain that you chose me because you felt that you could spend the rest
of your life with me; not only that, but that you wanted to spend your life
with me."
    Tenchi looked at the sky. "Isn't that too shallow? Will they really be
satisfied with that answer?"
    Washu hugged his arm and nuzzled her head against it. "I was."
    Tenchi lifted Washu's chin with his index finger and smiled warmly. "You
know how beautiful you are?"
    Washu slid her hands down his wrist, moaning, "Uh-huh."
    Tenchi drew her closer, slowly. "And smart?"
    Washu closed her eyes and puckered her ruby-red lips. "Yeah."
    Tenchi closed his as well. "And sexy?"
    Unexpectedly, Tenchi whirled her around and started tickling her madly.
    Washu laughed girlishly and squirmed under Tenchi's tenacious grasp.
"Hahahaha! Stop Tench-haha-i! Hahaha!"
Tenchi eventually tackled her to the ground and pinned her arms with his
hands. He looked at his wife as her chest heaved up and down with repressed
laughter. He smiled fiendishly.
    "And you're still so cute."
    Tenchi leaned down and kissed Washu deeply. She returned it by wrapping
her arms around his back and pulling him down on top of her, communicating
the fire of love inside her with several amorous embraces and resonant
purring deep in her throat; igniting passion in the man that was not only
her husband, but her lover, and her hero.

<<>>

    Washu's lab seemed simple enough to enter. All you do is open the closet
door, right? Wrong. Many strange and unusual force fields and defense
weaponry that stopped or vaporized intruders with the highest level of
universal efficiency had been implemented to prevent unwelcome guests from
discovering Washu's most closely guarded scientific secrets.
    That said, Mihoshi had accomplished the impossible.
    "How did I get so lost?" she asked herself as she wandered Washu's lab.
"How did I even get in here?" She remembered looking for a broom to sweep
the kitchen floor with, but that was about it.
    Soon enough, she came to Washu's personal computer interface. "Oh, what
does this button do?"
Mihoshi pressed the biggest button on the console, which happened to be the
"on switch". Suddenly, the computer flashed to life and sparks flew from the
screen. Mihoshi screamed and dived under a nearby chair. Smoke billowed from
the back of the data processor.
    Soon enough, the contraption quieted down and Mihoshi looked up from
under the chair. A magenta-haired woman was speaking frantically on the
screen.
    " - malfunction if some kind of barrier isn't in place! Tenchi close
 it-"
    "Who are you?!" Mihoshi chimed.
    The scientist Washu turned her head very slowly. "What the hell?"
    Mihoshi pouted. "That's not a very nice thing to say."
    Washu looked VERY confused. "Who-who are you?"
    "I'm First Class Detective Mihoshi! Pleased to meet you!"
    Washu laughed. "Don't be silly! You're the new Ryo-Ohki, aren't you?"
    Mihoshi looked at her strangely. "What's a 'Ryo-Ohki'?
    Washu began to become worried. "But you look just like Ryo-Ohki's
humanoid form. How can you be . . ." She looked around herself. "Where am
I?!"
    Magenta-haired Washu was floating in a black space which was lanced with
blue energy pulses. She was dumbfounded. "How did I- This kind of experiment
had nothing to do with alternate dimensions! How did this happen?" She
looked gravely at the screen. "Turn this computer off, Mihoshi."
    Mihoshi looked as ditzy as ever. "How do I do that?"
    Washu sighed. "Press the biggest button, and then tell Washu to come and
turn it back on again in one hour."
    "Okay!" Mihoshi said, switching off the computer and skipping right out
of the lab with a sudden burst of inexplicable knowledge of the lab exit's
whereabouts. It was as if nothing unusual had ever happened in the first
place.

<<>>

    Mihoshi returned to the lab three days later, dragged by Washu, in the
middle of the night.
    "Why did you wait three whole days to tell me about this?!" Washu ranted
as Mihoshi sobbed incoherently. "Can't you do anything right?!"
    Mihoshi stopped whimpering. "I'm sorry, Ms. Washu. I forgot!"
    Washu finally released her hold on Mihoshi's shirt collar and sighed,
placing a hand against her forehead. "You always forget, Mihoshi." She
turned to the master computer. "So you're telling me that an alien using my
name managed to hack into my central computer core?"
    Mihoshi nodded reluctantly.
    Washu turned the power on. "All right, then."
    The sounds of snoring could be heard behind the screen.
    Washu looked confused. "Hello?"
    A strange magenta-haired creature that possessed no other hair except
for that on her head sat bolt upright. "Wha? Oh, you're finally here!"
    Washu was amazed at the physical composition of this creature on her
computer screen. She looked familiar in a way. Still, business was business.
"All right, who are you and what have you done to my computer?"
    The girl on the other side of the screen smiled. "My name is Professor
Washu."
    The Washu on the lab side did a double take. "Give me a break! What kind
of sick joke is this?"
    The human Washu frowned. "This is no joke. I've figured out that I'm
from a parallel dimension to your own and that both of our dimensions are in
very real danger."
    A distressed silence pervaded the room. A loud thump was heard as
Mihoshi passed out on a table.
    The Ryo-Ohki-like Washu responded, "Let's say that I believe you; what
kind of danger are we in?"
    Human Washu's frown grew wider as her eyebrows furrowed. "A
time-space-dimensional paradox that could warp the interdimensional universe
into an anti-time anomaly which would in turn destroy every plane of
existence that resides within the boundaries of scientific knowledge."
    Ryo-Ohki-like Washu's eyes grew very wide. "And how much time do we have
before this disaster?"
    Human Washu pulled up a data pad. "Approximately 48 hours and counting."
"Oh, nut-bunnies."

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:  Is it wierd enough yet?  You have only seen the tip of
the iceberg!  (enter snobbish Ayeka laugh)

Next on Lighthawk Legend:

Tenchi:  Boy, Washu has really done it this time.  Apparently, she's created
another dimension that's a combination of
             her thoughts and feelings and Ryo-Ohki's DNA!  However, only
one dimension can exist.  Which dimesion
             will survive?

COMING SOON:  Lighthawk Legend, Episode 10:  No Need for a Paradox!