Yasha Muyo - Scroll 2: No Need For New York French Immigrant Cabbies (Or
Quantum Physics)


Kiyone, Mihoshi, Ayeka, Sasami, Ryoko and Tenchi stood in the doorway of the
dark lab, jaws on the floor. In front of them was the usual clutter of
Washu’s lab, but it was a million times worse. Besides all the unfathomable
technical crap that sat around blinking and whirring and generally
collecting dust (in their eyes) there were things one would never find in a
lab anywhere. Big screen TV’s, salad shooters, artillery, lipstick,
microwaves, a hot tub, lava lamps, a through-bred stallion, bumpercars, one
of those test-your-strength do-hickies, barbeque pits, a gaggle of geese,
the Mier spacecraft, a windmill, a giant cookie jar in the shape of Jupiter,
a bed of Chrysanthemums, and a blue and white Shelby Cobra GT-500 with a
little scientist poking around under the hood.
Ryoko stepped around the geese, kicked an economy sized can of spam out of
her path and picked up Washu by the back of her pants.
“Oh, hi Ryoko!” Washu waved a greasy socket wrench at her daughter. “Whaddya
want? Come to apologize for that terrible sake?”
Ryoko was swiftly turning various shades of purple. “What on earth do I have
to apologize for? You released those...those...THINGS in the bath!!! They’re
a menace!! They might have rabies!”
Washu bashed Ryoko over the head with the wrench. “They most certainly are
not menaces!! How dare you call them that! If Sasami had just cooked them
like I asked her to, they would’nt be all over the place!”
Ayeka turned a sickly shade of green. “You wanted us to eat those things?
Sick!”
“Oh, blow it out your pipes.”
Sasami peered into the car. “What are you doing?”
Washu rolled her eyes. “The idiot who owned this car had it packed full of
bombs!! Look at all this!!”
She held up a carton filled to overflowing with grenades, vials, and
packages of explosives, all with lips, flowers and hearts painted on them.
Tenchi recognized them and groaned.
“You fool, you stole Rally Vincent’s car!”
Washu shrugged. “Hey, I don’t watch that much anime. It was a mistake.”
“Washu, where did you get all this stuff? wondered Kiyone. “You did
something illegle, did’nt you.”
“Hey, I did’nt know it was going to turn out like this!!!!”
“And just what were you doing?” grumbled Ryoko, massaging a bomb on her
head.
“Well, I WAS trying to create a space, by twisting and working on
preexisting space, since you guys broke my other time and space machine.
This,” she gestured to the cylinder. “Is my new, upgraded model. It still
works with both time and space, but I introduced new variables to put more
control on the space warping properties. Unfortunately, when I was trying to
create a specific space, I wound up with one of the variables. Got that?”
Blink.
“So, it does what?” Mihoshi blinked again.
Washu sighed and ran her hands through her hair. Why did she even bother?
“Ok, everyone with more that one brain cell, step forward - NOT SO FAST!!!!
This machine is like the other machine you all broke when we traveled
through time and space. Okay so far?”
They nodded.
“Right. So, this new one is supposed to be better, but when I tried to run a
test, it backfired.” She gestured to the platypus who was still munching
unnoticed on Ayeka’s hair. “I was trying to create a tiny habitat in another
dimension for those creatures, but for some reason, the machine gave me the
creatures in this dimension instead of the habitat in another dimension.”
Surprisingly, they actually looked like they understood, with the exception
of Mihoshi, but Washu had been expecting that.
“Lemme give you a demonstration.”
She hopped up into the control box and looked at her audience. “Gimme
someplace.”
“New York!!” squealed Mihoshi. “Bring us the Eiffel Tower!”
Hmmm, maybe she did understand, now all she needed to understand was that
the Tower was in France.
“Ya mean the the Statue of Liberty?”
“Ohhh, that too!”
Nope. No hope whatsoever.
“No, not here in the house!” shouted Tenchi.
“Relax, the lab is extended space. It won’t hurt your house.” The short
woman pressed buttons, the light on the side of the cylinder crackled and
sparked. “Here we go!” There was a dull roar, a rushing sound and a muffled
pop. Washu frowned. The Statue of Liberty would have made a bigger pop than
that. Oh well. She leaped down to the portal on the side.
“Ok, here it is!” And kicked open the door.
“Aie!!!”
“GYAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!” Washu stumbled back wards as fifteen confused men
stepped out of the tube. “Whoops!”
“Parle vous francias?”
“Whaddhe say?”
Everyone shrugged. Washu started tearing out her hair, as did Kiyone, who
was muttering something about grand theft kidnapping, or something.
“Ahhh, crap.” sighed one of the men, and took a drag on the cigarette he was
holding.
“AGGGGHHHH! No smoking in my lab!” screamed Washu.
“Hmm. Looks like you got some cabbies.” mused Ayeka.
“You are not helping in the slightest!” barked Washu. “See what I mean? All
these accidents! I don’t know how to send them back, either!! I tried, but I
just wound up with more stuff!!”
Tenchi herded the crowd out, leaving Washu to deal with the 15 irritated
French immigrant New York cabbies.
Everyone else went to go eat supper, with the seven Platypi eating out of a
long dish under the table. (They had been unable to locate the last
Platypus, and Tenchi had a nasty feeling it was going to show up either dead
or jump out of somewhere and scare somebody into blowing something up.)
Nobody had been able to figure out what a platypus would eat either, so
Sasami finally made a salad and watched to see what they ate and what they
didn’t.
Washu showed up an hour later with one of the cabbies by the hand. They sat
at the table and started shoveling rice in their faces with alarming speed.
“Hey, what happened to the other 14?” asked Sasami.
“Oh,” said Washu casually out of the side of her mouth. “They joined
Kiyone’s rent collectors.”
“No!”
“Oh, yes!”
“Well then,” drawled Ryoko over her cup of sake. “Why is’nt he a lab rat?”
“Oh yes. This is Kori. He knows quantum physics, and is helping me with the
space shifter.” Her fast and furious supper finished, she brushed off her
mouth and sprinted back for the lab, dragging Kori with her.
“What are quantum physics?” asked Mihoshi.
“Who knows.” murmured Sasami. “He was so young!! Only earth 12 or so!!”
“Yes,” added Ayeka slyly. “Why don’t you go help them out?”
Sasami blushed furiously and hurried back to the kitchen, running into the
wall on the way out.
“Ow!!!”
Giggle

Kori wiped sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand and concentrated
on the welding job that sat in front of him. He did’nt notice anyone near
him until a little hand tapped his shoulder.
“Huh?”
Sasami jumped backwards, almost spilling the tray she was carrying.
“I...I thought you might want a snack.”
He blinked in confusion, she held the tray out to him. “Don’t you want any?”
Slowly he reached out and accepted the platter, which was full of random
snacks, ranging from little sandwiches to fruit to elaborate little cakes.
He daintily selected one of the cakes and bit into it. His face lit up.
“Bien!”
Sasami smiled and laughed. “Really? Wow!!” she sat down next to him,
something he obviously did’nt expect.
>From here position atop the cylinder, Washu smiled and she plugged away at
the connected wiring. She would have to start Kori on a subliminal language
program, and Sasami also. She wondered for the umpteenth time how such a
little guy had wound up with the other guys. The rest of her now-lab-rats
had been in their 30’s or so. Her guess was that Kori was 13, judging by
human growth rate and metabolism. Washu was itching to run some tests on
him, but refrained. She knew that if Tenchi ever found out, she would run
the chance of being evicted.
Job finished, she slid down the side of the cylinder, opposite Sasami and
Kori. Wiping her hands off, she trotted around to the control box.
“Ok, kids!! Lets see what this thing does this time!!”
Kori and Sasami scampered up next to Washu as she punched buttons. The
machine glowed and hummed.
“So whats it gonna do now?” asked Sasami.
Washu’s eyes were glowing excitedly. The reflection of the crackling lights
gave them an almost evil glare. “It’s gonna take a piece of empty space in
the ST6 dimension, and make a little temple in a field. Inside the door
should be that space.”
There was another muffled pop, and they leaped down and ran to the door in
the side. Washu dragged it open.
“Not again...”
A full sized roman chariot rolled out. Washu kicked it furiously. “Crap!!”
“You know, Washu, why don’t you just leave this machine the way it is? Just
as a bringer thing.”
“Well, I guess I could.” she frowned. “But I can’t control what it brings.”
Her eyes brightened happily. Another challenge had presented itself! This
was finally a machine that would’nt cause mass destruction, so maybe she
could get pulled back into the Space Science Academy. Hee hee hee. Sure,
weapons of fantastical explosive power were much more fun, but this could
throw those old fogies off the track for a while. She would probably get
kicked back out again, but hey, how many times had that happened before? And
they always put her back in again. It would be fun.
“Hey, Sasami, how much english does Kori speak?”
“Enough to do quantum physics.” grinned the little princess.
Washu grinned back. “Goodie. Do you speak french?”
“A little.”
Washu glanced at her watch. “It’s pretty late. You guys ready to retire
now?”
Sasami nodded. Kori looked a little nervous. Washu caught the look on his
face.
“I’m staying up, Kori, you wanna work some more?”
He nodded quickly. Sasami shrugged and walked out the lab door. Washu poked
Kori in the back as he watched her go.
“Listen, I’ve got nothing else to, but I figured that you might wanna stay
with me?”
He looked sheepishly up at her and she winked. “Come on.” Over in the
corner, she yanked open a door to a dimensional portal and led him into a
nicely furnished room. “This is 15th century japan, a room in a family inn
on the coast. You are separate from the outside world, so just relax. I’ll
see you in the morning.”
She skipped out before he could protest and sprinted back to her latest
room, which was a turkish sultan’s room. She flopped on the rich blue
pillows and kicked off her little shoes. Silk and tulle were floating all
over the place, sending a relaxing air through the room. She knew eventually
that she would tire of this motif, but for now it was rather pleasant. She
chewed her nail thoughtfully as she drifted off to sleep. Shame she did’nt
have anyone to share this luxury with. Maybe she should try working on
Tenchi. The look on Ryoko’s face would be priceless! One last snicker before
falling asleep.

Lalalalala...I love writing. It's so much fun. Be sure to review, ok? Bai
Lao!
-Washu & Xellos