Galaxy 1001D presents:
Washustein; or the Modern Mad Scientist
Starring Washu Hakubi as Doctor Washu Fitzgerald von Washustein
Tenchi Masaki as Tenchi Mancini
Mihoshi Kuramitsu as Mihoshi Gerstell
Aeka Masaki Jurai as Ayeka Jurai
Sasami Masaki Jurai as Sasami Jurai
And Ryoko as the Monster-woman
Tenchi Muyo and all related characters are © AIC/Pioneer/Genon/Funimation. 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 Nine: Flowers in the Pond
"Good morning Ryoko," Sasami yawned when she was fully awake. Last night, when Ryoko didn't want to sleep alone, Sasami had graciously let her share a bed with herself and Ryo-ohki. To be honest, the blue haired child didn't want to sleep alone in a strange bed in a strange house during a thunderstorm either.
Ryoko stretched and rolled out of the bed to follow Sasami out the door. Sasami paused outside the restroom to say, "You can't come in. You'll have to wait your turn."
"Mew…" At Ryoko's side was the kitten-rabbit creature Ryo-ohki. The little cabbit had made peace with her fellow creation last night and now extended a paw towards Ryoko in sympathy. As Sasami entered the restroom, Ryo-ohki turned and loped down the hall towards the staircase.
After the child closed the door on the overgrown innocent, Ryoko turned her head left and right to survey her surroundings and assess her options. She noticed Washu leave her room and more importantly, leave the door open. When Washu approached, Ryoko scampered past her on all fours to duck into her creator's bedroom.
"I wonder what she wants in there?" Washu asked herself. She tried the door to the restroom, but it was locked. "Is somebody in there?" she asked.
"I'll be out as soon as I can," Sasami's tiny voice answered.
"Don't worry about it, Sasami, I'll try the one on the ground floor," Washu assured her. As she walked away, she marveled at how polite she was to the sister of her hated rival. Sasami was so sweet that she didn't even seem resentful of her blue hair and pink eyes. Maybe after she married Tenchi Washu would make a potion that would restore the child's hair and eyes to their natural color…
The mad doctor passed Ayeka who was also on her way to the restroom. The purple haired aristocrat snorted and looked away as she passed the little scientist and refused to acknowledge her presence. After Washu married Tenchi she would restore Ayeka back to normal too, but it would be a while, maybe quite a while.
Later in the dining room Mihoshi came out with a fresh tray of food. "Come and get it!" she called. Next to soft-boiled eggs, cereal and fruit she placed a tray of cold meats (including one-of-a-kind hippogriff sausage) and cheeses alongside a variety of breads and sweet toppings of jam, marmalade and honey. A plaintive meowing caught her attention. "Oh don't worry Ryo-ohki, I haven't forgotten you!" the cheerful blonde assured her before she bent over to place a dish of carrots on the floor.
"Yaaugh!" Washu's voice screamed with the horror of the damned, causing Mihoshi to jump and the rabbit-like Ryo-ohki to scamper under the table. "What is this?" Washu's shrill voice demanded.
Upstairs, Tenchi was the first one on the scene. "Washu?" he cried as he opened the door. "Are you all right?"
"Get me to the bathroom," Washu snarled as she hopped around on one foot.
After she had washed her foot off, Washu was still frothing mad. "I can't believe it!" she snarled at the breakfast table. "How many Easter eggs did that big baby leave for me? Even Ryo-ohki uses her bunny box! You have been a bad, bad, girl young lady! Do you hear me?"
Ryoko was eating the pieces of sausage that Sasami had cut up into little bites and paying no attention to her creator's rant whatsoever.
"It's not her fault," Tenchi protested. "She's still less than a day old, and you never taught her how to use the restroom properly."
"I know that the natural processes of the human body is no taboo for the two of you," Ayeka said to the medical student and his insane professor, "but couldn't this topic wait until we have finished eating?"
"I caught her wiping her butt on the carpet!" Washu continued, causing the Jurai sisters to flinch. "My expensive, one of a kind, Persian carpet! Ruined! She scooted along on it like a dog or something!"
"Well you have to admit, it did get her nice and clean," Sasami pointed out.
"She hid her little buried treasure in my closet!" Washu complained. "I went inside to get some clothes and stepped in it!"
"Well it's your fault," Ayeka snapped. "It was your idea to bring her into the world fully grown. If she was a baby she would be small and manageable but now she's big, and can make really big messes. You better get used to this because you're going to have to take care of her until her mind catches up with her body. Taking care of a baby is a lot of work and taking care of little Ryoko is going to be a whole lot more. I hope you have a lot of time and patience Doctor Washustein. You're going to need it."
"Oh no!" Washu bowed her head and covered her face with her hands. "My life has become a horror story!"
"Don't worry," Tenchi said. "I'm sure her brain is more developed than most infants her age. I'm sure she'll be able to learn things fast and grow up quickly. She'll probably be mentally mature in no time."
"What did you say?" Washu looked up to stare at her ex-fiancé.
"I said that she'll be mentally mature in no time," Tenchi repeated.
"That gives me an idea!" Washu stroked her chin thoughtfully. "I think I see a way out of this…"
"A way that doesn't involve abandoning her?" Ayeka asked skeptically.
"Yes, you ingrate!" Washu snarled. "A way that doesn't involve abandoning her. All I have to do is finish her. My creation is still in the larval stage."
"I don't like the sounds of this," Sasami said defensively, her innocent face frowning in displeasure.
After the morning meal Washu led Mihoshi to a storeroom at the base of the west tower. "Come on Mihoshi! Help me out with this!" she said as she pulled out a cargo dolly and handed it to her befuddled domestic. "We've got to clean out the incubation vats and install the machine that is disassembled in these boxes here. I want that machine assembled and ready for testing by the end of the day, got it?"
"But Doctor Washustein, what about little Ryoko?" Mihoshi asked. "Who's going to take care of her while we're redoing the lab?"
"Curses!" Washu swore as she clenched her fists in frustration. "I'll just have to ask my houseguests to stay a while."
"The houseguests?" Mihoshi asked. "You mean the houseguests you wanted to leave so they wouldn't introduce Ryoko to random elements? Those houseguests master?"
"Yes, those houseguests!" Washu snarled in frustration. "They seem to have formed a bond with little Eve and I don't have a lot of choice in the matter! We'll just have to play the cards we've got!"
"Ryoko," Mihoshi corrected.
"What?" Washu looked up at her housekeeper.
"Baby Washustein's first name is 'Ryoko', master. Not 'Eve'," Mihoshi explained. "She won't respond to any other name."
"I'm starting to figure out why you've been fired from every other job…" Washu muttered.
"Oh please don't fire me!" Mihoshi cried, transforming from responsible adult into helpless child in the blink of an eye. "Please-please-please! I promise I'll be good!" she sobbed as she knelt on the ground and hugged her employer. "I promise!"
"Let… go…!" Washu grunted as her face turned blue. "Can't… breathe…!"
"Oops!" Mihoshi recovered from her fit and released the hapless Doctor Washustein, who collapsed on the floor like a sack of potatoes.
Outside, Ayeka was helping Tenchi hitch the horses to her carriage. "Come on Sasami!" Ayeka shouted. "We are leaving!"
"We can't leave poor Ryoko all alone!" Sasami protested. "She can't take care of herself! Can't we take her with us?"
"Certainly not, Miss Washu can take care of her," Ayeka sniffed. "It will teach that madwoman responsibility."
"Your sister's right, Sasami," Tenchi shrugged. "Technically Ryoko is Washu's daughter. Legally we have no right to take her with us."
"But Washu's going to do something horrible to poor Ryoko, I just know it!" Sasami pouted.
Both Tenchi and Ayeka paled at that statement. Deep in their hearts they wouldn't put it past the mad scientist.
"I'm sure she wouldn't hurt her own flesh and blood," Tenchi said lamely.
"I'm not so sure," Sasami sulked. "I think that we should stick around and take care of her."
"Sasami, I am not going to spend another moment with that woman!" Ayeka's voice was frightened rather than angry. No matter how much Ayeka claimed to be an unyielding authoritarian, deep down she was really softhearted. It was one of the things that Tenchi loved about her.
"Oh please…?" Sasami begged. "Couldn't we take her with us? She doesn't exist anywhere, nobody knows who she is. We could say that she's a cousin who was dropped on her head. If Washu says anything, it is her word against ours!"
"Please Sasami," Ayeka turned away to hide the tears she was blinking away. "Don't put me in this position! I didn't create that poor creature, Washu did! Don't make me take responsibility for that woman's actions!"
"Sasami's gone!" Tenchi shouted when he looked up from hitching the carriage to the horses. "Where did she go?"
"Sasami?" Ayeka put her hand to her mouth and looked around.
At the edge of a nearby pond, Sasami was crouching down besides Ryoko, idly picking some tiny wildflowers in her frustration. Ryo-ohki sat nearby.
"I'm sorry Ryoko, I have to go away," she said sadly to the one-day-old girl. "Ayeka won't let me stay. I'm afraid that something scary will happen to you while I'm gone."
Ryoko hugged Sasami and sniveled. Apparently she understood enough to realize that Sasami was leaving.
"Don't cry Ryoko," the child told the infantile adult. "It's okay. Everybody goes away. My daddy went on a sailing trip and he hasn't come back yet, but he assured me that he would." She spun a tiny bloom in her fingers and tossed it into the pond. "See, just because it floats away doesn't mean that it's gone forever. You can still see it. Even if you couldn't see it, it would still be there."
With a curious look on her face, Ryoko plucked a wildflower, spun it in her fingers and tossed it in the water. It landed stem up, like Sasami's did, the petals of the flower forming a tiny raft. Ryoko smiled at her accomplishment.
"You want to throw flowers in the water?" Sasami asked her. "Okay."
One by one they took turns plucking the tiny flowers growing in the grass and tossing them in the pond. Pretty soon they had completely defoliated the tiny scrubby plant.
"Oh dear it looks like we're out of flowers," Sasami's pink eyes looked down at the deflowered weed. "What are we going to throw now?"
Ryoko looked at Sasami's light skyblue hair. It was almost the same color as the flowers they had thrown. Before Sasami could react Ryoko picked the girl up and rose to her feet.
"Hey!" the little girl struggled in Ryoko's grip. "Wait! Wait!"
It was no use. The childlike Ryoko tossed the screaming girl into the pond, causing a loud splash.
"Help!" Sasami gasped as she thrashed around in the water. "I can't swim!"
"Aaugh!" Ryoko screamed in horror. She ran into the water to rescue the child, but she couldn't swim either. Now there were two girls thrashing about in the water while the cabbit meowed helplessly.
"Sasami?" Ayeka's voice called as she walked over the grassy hill to the pond. "Sasami!" Ayeka shrieked. "Tenchi! Come quickly!"
Tenchi ran up when he heard Ayeka's screams. "Sasami!" he cried. "Oh my gosh!" He dashed forward and dove into the pond to save the little girl.
In the meantime Ayeka picked up a tree branch and offered it to the flailing Ryoko. "Ryoko!" Ayeka called. "Grab a hold!"
When Ryoko grabbed the end of the long stick, Ayeka dug her heels into the damp earth and used both hands to pull with all of her might. She saw Tenchi carrying Sasami out of the water with her peripheral vision.
"Sasami!" Ayeka cried as she released the stick, causing Ryoko to fall backwards into the water again. "Tenchi! How is Sasami?"
Remembering his medical training, Tenchi pushed on Sasami's diaphragm to force the water out of her lungs. He was rewarded be the bedraggled girl's coughing and gasps for air. "She's breathing," Tenchi sighed. "Thank Heaven."
"Sasami! Sasami!" Ayeka hugged the child and made her sit up. "Are you all right? Speak to me!"
"I… Ayeka…" Sasami coughed.
"Sasami, what happened?" her sister asked. "What possessed you to go into the water?"
"Ruh… Ryoko threw me in…" Sasami gasped.
"Ryoko?" Ayeka frowned and turned her head to see Washu's creation crawling out of the pond. "That monster-woman? We trusted her and she tried to murder you!"
"No Ayeka it was an accident!" Sasami shook her head. "When she saw what she'd done, she came in after me!"
"I guess she really is Washu's daughter after all," Ayeka sneered. "Not even a day old and she tried to take you out of the picture! Well she's Doctor Washustein's problem now! Come on, Tenchi. Let's get Sasami out of here!"
"Okay," Tenchi nodded. "You get Sasami to the carriage while I get Ryoko back inside. If we turn our backs she might drown herself."
"Have it your own way," Ayeka sniffed as she pulled Sasami up to her feet.
"Goodbye, Ryoko," Sasami waved. "I'll miss you. Goodbye!"
"Meow!" Ryo-ohki howled mournfully.
"Sauce me!" Ryoko cried as Tenchi picked her up. Ryoko's hand reached out to Sasami as Tenchi carried her away. "Sauce me!"
"Don't cry, everything's going to be okay," Tenchi told her as he carried Ryoko inside the great hall of Castle Washustein. Ryoko had cried nearly the entire way. "I have to go now, but I'll be back to check up on you."
"There you are!" Washu glowered as she and Mihoshi entered the room. "And where have you been young lady? We've been worried sick about you. Look at you, you're soaking wet!"
"I pulled her out of the pond," Tenchi said as he set Ryoko down on a couch. "Well goodbye," he said as he turned to go. He didn't want to go into a lengthy explanation or get in a confrontation with Washu. His progress was impeded when Ryoko grabbed a hold of his leg.
"Ten chee…" Ryoko said with teary eyes.
"I'm sorry Ryoko, I have to go," he said gently as he freed himself from her grip. "Please don't make this any harder on me. I can't stay. Goodbye." Tenchi turned to hide his tears as he walked outside.
Ryoko reached out for him as Washu and Mihoshi seized her by the shoulders. "Ten chi!" she shouted. "TENCHI…!"
Next: Throw the Switch!