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Disclaimer: Tenchi Muyo is copyrighted by AIC/ Pioneer LDC, Hitoshi Okuda, and Viz.

“Get away from there, Bubblehead!”

Washuu tried to keep her face from twitching as she watched Mihoshi carefully. Once again the blonde had somehow managed to sneak into the extra-dimensional lab, bypassing even the security measures designed exclusively to keep her out.

Currently the GP officer was trying to examine one of Washuu’s projects. In Mihoshi-speak, “examine” meant fiddling around with it and causing it to:

1. Malfunction
2. Run Amuck
3. Self-destruct, or
4. All of the Above

More often than not, it was “D”. It wasn’t that the “Universe’s Most Brilliant Scientist” didn’t love chaos. Chaos was good. Chaos was great. Chaos kept the universe spinning around in an eternal state of disorientation. It was just that Washuu wanted to be the one responsible for the chaos, not the victim of it. Once again, Washuu really wished she could simply banish the bane of her existence to a black hole somewhere, but the one time she actually tried it, Mihoshi got near the control console before the moment of truth and shunted Washuu’s Infinite Improbability Generator into some other universe. The scientist didn’t think she could take another setback like that, so Mihoshi was allowed to continue to exist in this dimension.

Luckily, there were other things that could distract Washuu’s attention from the icon of chaos in her presence. She turned to the morning paper and looked over the want ad once again.

Wanted: One research assistant for the Universe’s Most Brilliant Scientist. Prior experience preferred. Come to the Misaki estate between the hours of 8:00 AM and 4:00 PM.

The ad only took up twice the size a normal one did. After she hacked into every newspaper’s computer system in the world, she intended to make the entire press runs of all the papers print nothing but the advertisement on every page. Somehow Tenchi caught wind of the plan and talked her out of it. So she settled for a simple article to get the job done. After all, who could resist working for someone as cute and adorable as L’il Washuu? They would be lining up outside the door any minute now.

Mihoshi noticed Washuu snickering over the paper. “What’s going on?”

“I put an ad in the paper for a new lab assistant,” Washuu explained.

“Oh! Oh! Pick me. I want to do it. I need another part time job to help make ends meet.”

Washuu stared flatly at her, “I would sooner give myself a voluntary lobotomy than let you be my assistant.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Mihoshi said, still excited at the idea of helping her good friend Washuu around the lab.

Taking a deep breath to calm herself, Washuu explained once again, more slowly this time in the hopes it would actually sink in. “You screw everything up. It’s like a Midas Touch, except everything of mine you come into contact with ends up turning into crap instead of gold. Now do you understand?”

Mihoshi shook her head.

Washuu’s temper began to fray. “What I mean is, I wouldn’t even have to use an ad if it hadn’t been for you! Remember Mecha-Washuu? That’s a perfect example of how you mess up.”

“But I didn’t do anything.” Mihoshi’s eyes began to form crocodile tears.

“You exist. That’s reason enough.”

Mihoshi couldn’t take it any more and started bawling her eyes out. The waterworks were so bad that a spray of tears ended up splashing on one of Washuu’s consoles, causing sparks to fly out.

“NO! STOP!” Washuu shouted as she lunged for the control panel. Too late. The computer screen printed out the words: Begin Missile Launch. Washuu hit the inventory file to see which one had fired.

“ARRRGH!!! That was the Luscious Lavender color!”

Tenchi mopped the sweat from his brow as he toiled in the newest carrot field they had just planted. It really was astounding just how many carrots Ryo-Oh-Ki could consume in a day. Tenchi just assumed interstellar space travel burned a lot of calories and began working again. Seeing the delighted look on the cabbit’s face was reason enough to make his efforts worthwhile.

A loud whine from the direction of the house caught his attention. He turned his gaze skyward, in the direction of the noise. He observed a missile, fired from a dimensional portal above the house, fly directly overhead. The missile detonated in high in the sky, releasing a large cloud of mist.

“That doesn’t look good,” Tenchi said to no one in particular.

The cloud continued to expand to an enormous size, and within moments it began to rain. Tenchi sighed to himself and started to walk towards the house. After a few moments in the rain, he at last noticed something peculiar. He held out one of his hands and watched the rain splash onto one of his white work gloves. The drops were purple in color. He just shook his head again, and then tried to wipe the offending water off his glove. It didn’t come off; rather, it left a deep purple stain.

“WASHUU!!!”

Washuu was more than a little put out by the events of the morning. Tenchi had burst into the lab yelling at her, as though it was somehow her fault Mihoshi had activated a “Rainbow Brite Rainmaker Missile.” He was complaining that his clothes and skin were now purple from head to toe and none of it would come off. It took her over an hour just to calm the usually quiet boy down, not that Ryoko’s presence had helped at all. After the space pirate heard him run into the lab she had phased through the door and followed. Once inside the lab, she floated around running her hands suggestively all over Tenchi and kept telling him that she, “loved to eat grapes”. Washuu finally convinced him that the coloring would fade in about twenty-four hours, and that he, the house, the fields, and everything else within a twenty-mile radius would turn back to normal. Until then there was nothing she could do about it. Besides, he looked good in purple.

Once the visitors had left, Washuu turned to face her bane again.

“Now do you understand?”

The facts didn’t matter to Mihoshi. “I wanna be your assistant.”

Washuu decided that desperate times called for desperate measures. “I’ll tell you what. If I can’t get an assistant by the end of the day, you can be it.” The officer gave her little “Mihoshi Dance of Joy” at the news, but Washuu held up her hand. “However, you have to sit still and not disturb anything. Can you do that?” Mihoshi nodded.

“Good” Washuu sighed. There was no way she would let Mihoshi be her assistant. It didn’t matter who showed up; she would accept them. The first applicant would come through the door at any second.

The seconds passed into minutes, then the minutes turned into hours. Washuu’s anxiety grew, as all too soon there was only five minutes left and still not a single applicant. Surprisingly, Mihoshi had kept her word and remained perfectly still, not interfering with anything for a record amount of time. Washuu nerves were almost at an end as she seriously considered prepping her lobotomy machine, just in case it came down to the worst-case scenario. She was about to make her way over to the machine, when salvation appeared in the form of a high-pitched voice.

“I’m here for the lab assistant job.”

Washuu and Mihoshi turned to see who the newcomer was. There was no one there.

“I’m down here.” Washuu turned her gaze downward and saw a lanky white rat walking on his hind legs, a suitcase in hand.

“There must be some mistake. I wanted a lab assistant, not a lab rat.” A smile spread across Washuu’s lips. “Still you shouldn’t have come all this way for nothing. Want to try some of my super anabolic steroid/amphetamine pills?”

The rat held up his hands. “No, thanks. I just ate. And I should tell you I really am here for the lab assistant job. This is the right place, isn’t it?”

Mihoshi started jumping up and down in joy. “I’m going to get the job. I’m going to be Washuu’s lab assistant.”

Washuu placed her hand to her chin in thought as she looked at the rat. “You have any prior experience?”

The rat nodded, “I used to work with a brilliant genius who wanted to rule the world, but we had a falling out. When I saw your ad I said to myself, ‘Boy I’d love to work with the Universe’s Most Brilliant Scientist.’ So here I am.”

Mihoshi giggled vacantly and turned to the rat. “There’s no way she’ll pick you.”

Washuu looked back and forth between the two. She started to consider which one to choose, and then she realized it was no choice at all. She walked up to Mihoshi and placed her hands on the officer’s shoulders. A smile brightened upon Mihoshi’s lips.

“Get the hell out. I’m picking the rat.”

Mihoshi was crushed. She ran out of the lab crying. Washuu gave a little dance of joy of her own, then went to a nearby bottle of champagne and popped it open in celebration. She offered some to her new assistant, which he accepted gracefully.

“So what’s your name, little one?” Washuu asked as she took a swallow of champagne.

“They call me Pinky, ma’am. Pinky.”

They’re Pinky and Washuu.
They’re Pinky and Washuu.
One is a genius, the other is a loo.
To prove their fiendish worth,
They’ll filch the universe.
They’re tinkering,
They’re Pinky and Washuu-shuu-shuu—shuu-Poit!

Author's notes: special thanks to Damon Casale for the song part of it, and to Keith Alan Johnson for some recommendations.

Webmaster: Larry F
Last revision: May 21, 2007