Galaxy 1001D presents:
Washustein; or the Modern Mad Scientist
Starring Washu Hakubi as Doctor Washu Fitzgerald von Washustein
Tenchi Masaki as Tenchi Mancini
Tenchi Muyo and all related characters are © AIC/Pioneer/Genon/Funimation. Additional material by Ben Elton, Richard Curtis, and Rowan Atkinson © BBC Enterprises Ltd. This story is written solely for entertainment and is not intended to make a profit in any way.
Based on "Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus" created by Mary Shelly
And "Tenchi Muyo" created by Masaki Kajishima
Chapter Two: Breaking Up is Hard to Do
Tenchi Mancini rode his horse out of Ingolstadt's busy streets on his way to see his fiancé, the lovely and ingenious Washu Fitzgerald von Washustein. If anyone had told him that he would fall in love with his biology professor when he first came to the Ingolstadt University in Bavaria he wouldn't have believed it. He could still remember when his Hungarian roommate Amagaski suggested such a crazy thing on their last day at boarding school.
"Hey Tenchi, I hear you're leaving for Bavaria," the fat and bespectacled boy had said as he scratched his red acne-ravaged nose. "I understand that you got accepted at the Goldstadt Medical College in Ingolstadt."
"Yeah Amagaski," Tenchi had replied as he packed his things to leave the boarding school forever. "I put in for Heidelberg too, but it was Goldstadt that accepted me."
"Well if your scores get hairy, I heard there was a way to get in with those Bavarian professors," his tubby roommate had continued. "I heard that you always get a passing grade if you do them… favors."
"Well that's the University system for you," Tenchi had laughed. "The underclassmen spend so much time stepping and fetching for the upperclassmen, they barely have time to do any studying. I'm not surprised that every student has to act like personal valets for the professors."
"No you don't understand," Amagaski had said as he leaned his corpulent bulk against the doorframe. "I mean do them favors… I understand that a lot of those stuffy old professors have a thing for strapping young boys."
"Wait a minute!" Tenchi's voice had raised an octave as he looked up from his packing to stare at his roommate. "What are you talking about? They wouldn't be interested in me that way, would they?"
"Why of course," Amagaski had looked away and attempted to be nonchalant. "A good looking guy like yourself should be able to find a professor that would pass them with flying colors! You'd probably have to move in with him, but think of the close contact and all of the research you'd be privy too. You'd know all of his pet theories by heart. He wouldn't even need to grade you unfairly to put you at the top of the class…"
"Yee-ah!" Tenchi had cried as he put the strength of his entire body in the punch he gave his roommate's face. The punch was so powerful that the six-foot, two hundred and fifty pound boy spun through the air and was hurled out of the room into the hallway. As Amagaski fell off the cracked and damaged wall to collapse on the floor, Tenchi had rubbed his fist and growled, "Get a life, clown!"
Back in the present day, Tenchi gave an embarrassed chuckle when he realized that nearly everything his old roommate said had come true. He really had fallen in love with the smartest professor at the college; only instead of a creepy old man she was a petite girl approaching twenty. "Poor Amagaski, I never did apologize to him," he muttered ruefully.
He looked up at the walled towers of Castle Washustein, the ancestral home that Washu had taken apart brick by brick and moved here to be reassembled. Tenchi smiled and shook his head in disbelief.
So brilliant was Washu von Washustein that she was the only professor in history to be offered tenure after only five years of teaching. She had broken the age and the gender barriers in one fell swoop, and now the young Italian student was going to marry her. It was incredible! What would their children be like? What advances in science and civilization would future generations remember them for?
The main gate had an aquatic motif to it, for the gargoyles resembled crabs more than demons or wolves. After the young medical student dismounted, he reached behind a claw and extracted a hose that he blew into. He then put the hose to his ear and waited for a response. "Is that you, Tenchi dear?" Washu's voice sounded tinny through the speaking tube.
"Yes it is, my darling, I've come to visit you!" Tenchi had to remove the tube from his ear so he could speak into it. "I got worried when I heard that Igor quit! Open the gate, Washu, so I can come in!"
"Okay, sweetie-pie," Even with the distortion, Washu's voice sounded coy and mischievous when Tenchi returned the speaking tube to his ear. He placed the tube back in its concealed holder behind the stone crab's claw and watched the front gate open.
As Tenchi walked his horse through the courtyard, his expression softened when he heard the voice of his true love calling to him. "Oh Tenchi darling," Washu whistled enticingly. "Here I am!"
"Washu!" Tenchi dashed up to the doorstep and embraced the little redhead. "What happened? Why did Igor leave? I don't understand."
"Don't worry about him," she said with a dismissing gesture. "Some people are too wimpy for super-science. Since you're here, you can help me with my experiment!"
"Oh really?" Tenchi's eyes became wary at that, for Washu had been experimenting in sadomasochistic domination last week. "Dare I ask?"
"Oh don't worry," Washu assured him with a blush. "I won't be experimenting on you today, I assure you!" They both shared some embarrassed laughter. "Oh no, it's nothing like that. Come on! Let me show you!" She ran behind him and pushed on his back to get him into the main house.
Down in the cellar, Washu opened a door that contained a bunch of strange animals in cages. Tenchi looked at the unusual beasts. Surely the dim lighting down here created illusions! "What's wrong with these animals?" Tenchi asked his little fiancé.
"Oh these?" Washu said as she stopped at a second door. "Oh they're not the experiment I told you about. These are just a few crossbreeds I've been working on for practice."
"Does that small lion have the hindquarters of a dog?" Tenchi asked.
"Yup," the little redhead nodded as she smiled. "You are looking at an actual wilde-beast, a cross between a lion and a dog. The perfect hunter. Pretty neat, huh?"
"Uh… yeah…" Tenchi said weakly. He was wondering if this was what drove Igor off.
Washu pointed at a hideous chicken thing that was squawking in its cage. "This little guy is a cross between a rooster and a serpent," she said proudly. "I had hoped to recreate the legendary cockatrice but I haven't figured out a way to make it venomous yet."
"You want to make it venomous?" Tenchi blanched in horror.
"Sure, the cockatrice of Arabian legend is supposed to be poisonous enough to foul a river just by drinking out of it," Washu shrugged, "and it's supposed to have a stinger on its tail. I haven't figured out how to breed one like that yet." She smiled at her fiancé. "I had no idea you were so interested in animal husbandry. I've created several unique breeds. It will be interesting to see which ones survive…"
"Survive?"
"Yeah, most of 'em die of congenital defects," Washu admitted. "I haven't had one of them last longer than three months."
"Ah… what kind of experiment did you need my help with?" a horrified Tenchi asked in a voice louder than he intended. Any excuse to leave the menagerie seemed like a good one.
"Oh, in here," she said as she took his hand and led him into the next room. Inside the underground chamber was various glass tanks filled with water. Some were big enough to use as a wading pool. Evidently, Washu had pushed the envelope on glassblowing as well as medicine. "Here is my laboratory," she said in a melodramatic voice. "This is the place where I beat God at his own game and show the Creator a thing or two! Yesiree!"
"Washu, what are you talking about?" Tenchi gasped.
Washu turned around to face him and put her hands on her hips. "Tenchi my love, this is where I have discovered the secret—to life—itself. This is where I have unlocked the secrets of creation and played with the building blocks of life as if they were… um… building blocks! So far I have just created some weird animals, but now I'm setting my sights much higher! Now I am ready to create a human being!"
"A human being!" Tenchi repeated in disbelief. "But that's impossible!"
"Oh Tenchi, what a predictable response," Washu scolded as if he had just stolen a cookie out of the cookie jar. "You could have said something like 'You'd have to be the greatest genius who ever lived to accomplish such a feat' or something like that."
"You mean to create a human being in your lab?" Tenchi gasped in revulsion.
"Why yes, I do," she said haughtily. "No longer will women be forced to labor for nine months while our perfect bodies are warped from the inside! Now I shall be the first to bring into this world a human that will lift us above the gods! A human that will be strong, fast, enduring, and brilliant! A newer, better human being, who will lead humanity into a new utopia! A human who will not leave stretch marks on her beautiful mother! No more dying in childbirth for us ladies! Now we will be able to create our children in the laboratory and they will be strong and beautiful!"
"That's monstrous!" Tenchi gasped. "I thought that we would bring new life into this world together, the old fashioned way, as God intended."
"Well if God intended me to wreck my young and beautiful body, I'll bring life into the world my own way," Washu frowned. "It will be a lot safer for me. Besides, it will be better for the baby if the mother isn't a basket case from all the mood swings."
"The baby!" Tenchi snarled. "You aren't thinking about the baby! You're only thinking about yourself!"
"What's the matter with thinking for myself?" Washu snarled. "I'm the first woman to be a tenured professor anywhere in the world! If there's one thing I've learned in this world, the only way to make change is to be pushy!"
"What about the baby?" Tenchi cried. "Even if you somehow accomplish the miracle of creating life outside of the womb, what kind of mother will your creation be getting? A selfish woman who would risk a freakish and deformed offspring rather than take the risk of carrying the baby herself?"
"Hey!" Washu used her forefinger to poke her prize student in the chest. "Get off your high horse! My creation won't be freakish and deformed! It will be a Greek god! It will be stronger, faster, better looking, and smarter than any of those morons out there in the world! My creation will be the greatest thing to happen to humanity since we learned to make fire!"
"You're mad!" Tenchi shouted.
"I sure am!" Washu shouted back. "I'm furious! How dare you say that my creation will be freakish and deformed?"
"No, I mean you're insane!" Tenchi clarified. "You haven't even created an animal that has lived longer than three months and you're talking about creating a human! You're crazy!"
"Crazy?" Washu snarled as her lovely face became distorted from anger. "Is it crazy to see the world different than everybody else does? Is it crazy to not accept the reality we are given but instead to create the reality we desire? Is it crazy to see things no one else can imagine, or to hear the call that no one else can hear? Tell me, is that crazy? Huh? Is it?"
"Yes," Tenchi nodded coldly. "Yes, it's crazy on all counts."
"I was being poetic you idiot!" A vein on Washu's head throbbed as she shook her fist. "You know what I mean!"
"I used to think that I did, but now I'm not so sure," Tenchi said with an appraising look. "If this isn't all a joke, I don't think I want you raising my children."
"What are you talking about?" Washu crossed her arms haughtily. "There's no mother as great as me!"
"Washu, you need help," Tenchi said sadly. "A brain specialist or something. There's no way you can possibly do what you're saying and even if you could, you shouldn't. There is no way you can raise a child right. I'm sorry, my love, but this is goodbye." He turned around and left through the open door.
"G-goodbye?" Washu's already pale skin lost all color. "What do you mean 'goodbye'? Hey! Come back here! I'm talking to you! Get your scrawny butt back here!" The little redhead dashed out of her secret lab to chase her fiancé before he left her life forever.
She caught up with him in the courtyard. "Hey stupid!" she said as she clutched his sleeve. "Where do you think you're going?"
"I'm leaving Professor, I'm sorry," he said sadly as he untied his horse from the post. "No matter how much I love you, this just isn't going to work."
"What? Because of what we said in there?" the little redhead was incredulous. "All lovers fight. So do spouses. If you're going to let a little thing like that get in the way of our marriage you aren't even trying!"
Tenchi was surprised. He could have sworn that calling any woman insane and an unfit mother would be enough to instill instant hatred, yet Washu acted as if they had argued over the color of the curtains. "Washu, I can't marry you. There's no way I can marry someone crazy enough to think that they can create life in their own image."
"What are you talking about?" Washu sneered. "Are you blind? I've already created life in my own image. Just take a look at my little homunculus!" On Washu's shoulder something that appeared to be a child's plush doll, but it resembled Washu herself, right down to the flaming red hair. On its blouse was a letter 'A'. "Get a load of this cute little guy! A wonder of alchemy and modern science! The perfect distillation of humanity and all of my incredible Washuness, without being bound by my crass and petty human failings. Pretty neat, huh?"
"What is that little thing?" Tenchi squinted at it. "It is some kind of animal, like a monkey?"
"A monkey?" Washu frowned. "No you idiot! It's a homunculus! Part of my quest to perfect humanity into the highest and holiest state of being! This little guy is not only pretty, but extremely intelligent. Go ahead, say something to him!"
"You are the greatest Washu!" the little Washu-thing said in a high-pitched version of Washu's voice. "You're the greatest genius who ever lived! Archimedes was a puffer compared to you!"
"See what I mean?" Washu smiled cheekily. "The little guy is perfect!"
A bead of sweat appeared at Tenchi's temple. "Look… Washu," he stammered. "Just because you managed to do the impossible and create a creature in your own image doesn't mean that you can do it again…"
"Yes, I can," Washu corrected as a second little Washu-thing appeared on her other shoulder. It was identical in every way to the first homunculus, except that sewn to its blouse was a capital letter 'B'. "See? I liked the first one so much that I made a second one! And it's every bit as brilliant as the first one! I'll show you!"
"You are a genius, Washu!" the second plush-style Washu-thing said in a voice that sounded exactly like the first one. "No one in the universe is as great as you!"
"See?" Washu grinned arrogantly. "These little guys are perfect! Ah-ha-ha-ha!" Washu and her creations laughed as confetti fell from an unknown source.
Tenchi, however, was less than impressed. "I'm sorry, Washu. You can't create life this way and even if you could you shouldn't. I love you, but you're insane. There's no way I can stay." With that Tenchi mounted his horse and rode out the gate.
"Insane huh?" Washu shouted after him. "We'll see who's insane! I can create the perfect human being! A new life in my image! I'll prove it to you! And then you'll come crawling back, begging for forgiveness! You'll give anything to be the spouse of the great Washu von Washustein! You'll see! You'll see! I will never give up until I prove you wrong!" With that, the heartbroken mad scientist fell to her knees and started crying.
Next: Good Help is Hard to Find