“No Need for Not Needing Things!”

By Serug (Serug@Excite.com)

DISCLAIMER – Tenchi Muyo! and all of the characters in it are the property
of Pioneer.

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Ryoko cruised toward the Masaki house. The evening sun was low behind her,
casting a long shadow that pointed towards her destination. A sly grin
graced her face. She had finally figured Tenchi out.

She had been wondering for some time now about his nervous reactions to her
advances. She had worried that maybe Tenchi wanted her to act differently,
though she couldn’t imagine how. She wanted to get some more general
information about human males to better understand the object of her love,
but didn’t want to tip off anyone at the Masaki residence – they would take
it the wrong way. Ayeka would mock her, Sasami would give more advice from
out of her manga romances, Washu would give her a lecture full of “my little
Ryoko” and “call me mom.” Yosho and Mihoshi would do nothing, out of wisdom
and cluelessness, respectively, but Nobuyuki . . . Nobuyuki would probably
invite her to watch “training videos in the art of love” with him again. To
avoid all that, Ryoko decided to take a trip to town in the morning and
research the subject of men privately.

She had planned to go to the library, really she had. But before she started
her research on what it was that Tenchi was looking for in a woman, she
stepped into a tavern she passed on the way, planning to have a pre-research
break to put her into the right mood to study.

Some eight hours and two gallons of sake later, Ryoko was prodded awake by
the bartender checking to see if she was still alive. Realizing that the
library was now no doubt closed, she was about to leave for home when she
heard, off in the corner, a group of angry women at a table loudly
discussing the very subject she had come to study. “Those women must know a
lot about men if they are talking about them so much. I can just ask them
what Tenchi wants from me and save myself a lot of boring hours at the
library,” Ryoko mused.

Now, going back, Ryoko was happy to finally know what Tenchi wanted. She
certainly was glad she had made the trip. “From the way he acts, I would
never have thought that all he wanted from me was sex,” she grinned, “but if
that’s what he wants, that’s what I’ll give him!”

Ryoko had been beginning to fear that her open affections were intimidating
Tenchi – Ayeka had suggested as much – but armed with her new knowledge she
realized that the opposite was the case: she hadn’t been giving Tenchi
enough clues that she was coming on to him. All she had to do was be act
more boldly, and Tenchi would surely respond in kind.

Armed with her knew understanding of the situation, Ryoko planned to sneak
into Tenchi’s bedroom and seduce him. There’s no way he could be confused
about my intentions after that, she thought to herself. Shivering with
excitement and nervousness, Ryoko hurried along the tree-lined road.

She halted suddenly when a greenish ball fell from the heavens and
obstructed her path. Ryoko watched warily as a figure began to emerge from
the transportation sphere. With horror, she recognized the man.

“Kagato!” She gasped. “but you’re dead!”

“Dead? Do you really have so little faith in me, Ryoko?” Kagato answered in
the droll tone which Ryoko had learned to hate over the course of the many
thousands of years she had spent as his captive and slave.

“But . . . but . . . how?” Ryoko stammered, still unable to believe in the
existence of the man before her. “I saw Tenchi cut you in half.” Kagato
smirked.

“I may have appeared dead to you all, but in fact I . . .”

Ryoko scowled as Kagato launched into a long and self-aggrandizing
description of how his scientific genius had allowed him to escape death.
She mentally kicked herself for giving Kagato an opening for this sort of
thing. As mad scientists went, he was actually pretty taciturn, preferring
short, sarcastic taunts or pithy melancholic observations to lengthy
monologues. But Ryoko had learned the hard way during her long period of
servitude to the evil mastermind that even Kagato could fall into fits of
narcissistic ranting, if sufficiently encouraged.

“. . . was a simple matter to reflect the gem frequencies through the
inverse world . . .”

What was left of the sun slid under the horizon, and dusk slowly turned to
twilight. Ryoko wondered if Kagato had always been susceptible fits of
obnoxious self-flattery or if it was a bad habit he had picked up as a
student of Washu. At least Kagato had the decency to be embarrassed by his
long-winded paeans to himself once they were over. He had always tried to
pretend afterwards that they had not happened, which was fine by Ryoko.

“. . . adjusting the relation of the astral pattern to the gravitational
constant . . .”

Suddenly it occurred to Ryoko that she had been listening politely only out
of habit. Now that she was no longer bound to do his will, she no longer had
to put up with this. She opened her mouth to interrupt him, but realized
that Kagato was winding up his speech.

“. . . but now I have returned for revenge!” Kagato concluded with a
theatrical flourish of his cape. “Since you, you worthless thing, betrayed
me, I will now crush your spirit!”

“You can fight me, but you can’t hurt me with your words, Kagato!” Ryoko
spat defiantly. “I know now that I’m not your machine, and I won’t believe
your lies anymore!”

“I had planned nothing so ineffectual, my dear. I will destroy your
enjoyment of life with an ancient and powerful weapon, the
AMERICANIZER-2300!!” Kagato said, ending with a triumphant shout. He
brandished an improbably bulky handgun at her.

The weapon, for all of its size, looked rather harmless to Ryoko’s practiced
eye. However, with a most wanted criminal like Kagato, one did not take any
chances. Ryoko charged at the man, trying to dodge his attack as he aimed
the weapon at her.

“Now you shall suffer for your insolence, girl!” he screamed as he fired the
gun. The weapon cast out a wide beam in a flashlight pattern, bathing the
area in front of Kagato with a faintly purplish glow. Ryoko was caught in
the gun’s wide field of fire and thrown to the ground.

The space pirate rebounded to her feet. Strange, she thought. I don’t feel
hurt at all. I guess old Kagato has finally gone around the bend.

“Ha!” She said, “is that the best that –“ Her hands clamped over her mouth
in shock. Her voice had changed, somehow!

“You’ll see, Ryoko. You’ll have the rest of your life to discover what I’ve
done to you! HAHAHAHAHAHA – oops,” he said, his insane laughter being cut
off by a beeping sound which came from his belt. He fumbled around for the
source of the noise. He finally pulled out a small electronic organizer.

“Well, I’d love to chat, but I have an appointment with my hairstylist. I’m
finally going to get the perm that I always wanted. I hope you have a long
life, now that I’ve taken away everything that gives you pleasure.
HAHAHAHA!!” He continued laughing as he retreated into his traveling pod.
The pod enveloped him in its green light, then rose into the sky until it
became lost among the stars.

“Hmmpf. So Kagato’s finally lost his marbles. I always figured that would
happen, someday,” mumbled Ryoko in her new voice. It really wasn’t such a
bad voice, she thought to herself, and she could live with it, if it came to
that. A space pirate is pragmatic about these things.

As she flew back to the house, Ryoko realized that dusk had turned to night
during her confrontation with Kagato. By now, Tenchi was no doubt asleep.

“Hmmpf,” she said again. “I guess I’ll just have to get him in the morning!”
she cheerfully thought to herself, and went to her rafter for a short nap
before she started on her vigil over her beloved.

*-*-*-*-*-*-*

Early the next morning, Ryoko was going over her plan one last time as she
watched Tenchi coming closer to wakefulness. She would offer herself to him,
he would then realize that she loved him, and then they would start groping
each other. Simple but foolproof, she thought.

Tenchi opened his eyes and looked around. When he found Ryoko where he
expected her to be, hovering over him, he spoke with polite resignation.

“Good morning, Ryoko. Would you mind letting me get dressed?”

What hurt Ryoko was the pained tone which Tenchi used, as though she were
some sort of annoyance which he had to put up with. Didn’t he know that she
wanted to be with him, and love him? Oh, that’s right, he doesn’t. Time to
implement the plan, she thought.

“Hey, Tenchi . . .” she drawled as seductively as she could manage.

“Uh, Ryoko, are you OK? What happened to your voice?” asked Tenchi in
concern. He stopped making his bed so that he could look at her.

“Oh, don’t worry about that!” Ryoko said dismissively. “I was wondering if
you would like to . . . go on a date with me?”

Tenchi looked thoughtful. Go on a date? he mused to himself. What an
interesting idea. Strange that he had never thought of it before. “All
right, Ryoko,” he answered impulsively.

Ryoko, however, did not notice that Tenchi had accepted her offer, as she
was distracted by her own words. “That isn’t what I meant to say . . .,” she
muttered, her brow furrowed. She decided to try again.

“I’m sorry, Tenchi, I meant to ask, could we spend some …. time together?”
She said. Again, things didn’t seem to have come out the way she had wanted.
It was like something was changing her words before they left her mouth.

Her eyes widened with realization. Kagato’s device! He must have done
something to her ability to say certain words. He must have known of her
love for Tenchi, and wanted to put obstacles in her path. Well, she was not
beaten yet. If she didn’t have the right words, she would use actions to
show Tenchi that she knew what he wanted and was ready to give it to him.

“Sure, Ryoko,” Tenchi was saying, now warming up to the idea of dating. If
he managed it right, maybe he could find out more about what Ryoko and Ayeka
were like when they weren’t fighting each other. “So long as you agree not
to do anything that would upset Ayeka, and give her a chance to go on dates,
too, if that’s what she wants. What did you have in mind?”

Again, Ryoko’s one track mind, intent on her objective of scoring with
Tenchi, failed to notice that Tenchi had agreed to a date with her. On the
other hand she was able to answer his question, as she certainly knew what
she had in mind.

“This is what I had in mind!” she exclaimed. Quickly she phased out of her
clothing and posed suggestively in front of Tenchi. His nose will bleed when
he looks at me, she schemed, and while he’s distracted I’ll glomp onto him.

But strangely, Tenchi’s nose did not bleed. Instead he blinked a couple of
times, and then smiled.

“Ah, I see,” he said, “you want to go to the beach. We can do that, I think.
It looks like a good day for it, and I can put off tending the carrot fields
for a little while. Let me clear it with father and let the others know
where we are going.”

“What are you talking about?” Ryoko asked with some irritation. “I’m not
dressed for the beach, I’m – urk!” She gasped, looking down at herself.
Although Ryoko had expected, upon removing her clothing, to be naked, she
found that she was wearing an inky blue form-fitting bikini.

With growing horror, she tried to remove the top half. Her efforts were
futile. She couldn’t even grasp it, however much she tried. It was as though
the swimsuit were painted on, except that it covered her like normal
clothing.

At that point a suspicious Ayeka barged into the room.

“STOP BOTHERING TENCHI YOU MONSTER WO . . . er, Ryoko, what are you doing?”
Ayeka asked, her battle charge coming to a complete stop at the sight of
Ryoko desperately clawing at herself.

“I can’t get this off of me!” Ryoko replied. Her voice was strained with
frustration and panic. Her rival was, as usual, not supportive.

“Well I am certainly not going to help you make a spectacle of yourself in
front of Lord Tenchi. Maybe you should stop taking your clothes off and
start putting them back on, you monster woman!”

“Oh wow! Are we having a party in here?” Mihoshi asked. After the surprise
party they had thrown for Nobuyuki’s birthday a month ago, Mihoshi had
become convinced that parties on Earth appeared spontaneously.

“There’s no party, Miss Mihoshi.” Tenchi said a bit wearily. “I’m just
trying to get dressed,” he continued, giving everyone a meaningful look. As
usual, no one seemed to notice. On the other hand, his words had an
unintended effect.

“Oh, you’re not dressed yet?” asked Washu, walking into the increasingly
crowded room. “Good. I need to run some tests, and it will save time if I
don’t have to undress you . . . oh, when you said ‘not dressed’ you meant
‘still in pajamas’,” she finished with some disappointment.

“Miss Washu, this is really not the time,” Ayeka began testily.

“Yeah, Washu,” Ryoko interrupted, trying to think of a way to get them to
leave her with Tenchi.

“What happened your voice, little Ryoko?” asked Washu as she noticed Ryoko’s
half-hearted efforts to disrobe for the first time.

So much for her private rendezvous with Tenchi, Ryoko sighed to herself. She
would have to tell them eventually, and now was probably as good a time as
any. “Kagato hit me with a beam of light as I was coming back to the house
yesterday”

“Kagato!” Tenchi and Ayeka shouted together in alarm. Tenchi instinctively
reached for the Tenchi-ken, while Ayeka reached up to the part of her
headpiece which would activate her battle armor. “Um, I thought that Kagato
was dead,” Mihoshi said.

“Well, he came back to life, somehow,” Ryoko snapped. “After he hit me with
that gun, my voice changed, I seem to be stuck in this bikini, and I can’t
always say what I’m thinking. When I try to say ‘go on a date’, it comes out
. . . Aaargh!”

“Hmmm”, Washu thought aloud. “This seems an awful lot like on old device of
mine . . . Kagato, you say? I should have expected that he would find it,
the sly dog!” Washu continued, looking disturbingly nostalgic.

“Don’t tell me you have anything good to say about that inhuman monster.”

“Kagato had his faults, but you have to admit he’s charmingly devious!”
Washu said, her smile turning a bit wicked, “and 20,000 years is a long time
to be a single woman when you’re as cute as me. You don’t think I’ve been
entirely celibate all those years, did you, little Ryoko?” Ryoko looked a
bit sick. Washu continued “Ah, this looks to be the work of the
Americanizer-2300! Truly one of my greatest inventions!”

“What does it do, Miss Washu?” Tenchi asked politely.

“I built it at the request of some concerned parents on a planet called
Fromhite,” Washu explained. “They were worried that their children were
being exposed to adult themes by the guilds of traveling space actors who
would drop by and stage bawdy plays from time to time in those days. So to
earn a little money, I created a beam that would make sure that the actors
couldn’t slip any offensive words or acts into their shows. Anything that
isn’t suitable for young children is ‘translated’ by the effects of the ray,
and comes out as some less vulgar phrase or display.”

“It must have been tough on the actors who couldn’t make good plays anymore,
now that they couldn’t act out the juicy parts. Did you think of that?”
Ryoko asked angrily.

“Of course I had planned for that! I am a genius, after all! The
Americanizer-2300 also has a ‘reverse’ ray. It was applied as the actors
left, and allowed them to put the steamy scenes back into the plays when
they traveled to other systems.”

“Um, Washu,” asked Mihoshi, “if you made it for the Frommians, why is it
called the ‘Americanizer-2300’?”

“Oh, those Frommians liked to assign random names and numbers to all of
their stuff. There is no significance at all to the weapon’s name,” Washu
answered.

“They must have been really grateful for your invention,” observed Ayeka,
wondering why she had never heard of this planet.

“They were, at least until a terrorist group stole the gun and shot the
entire planet with the ray.”

“What happened then?” asked Tenchi, curious.

“Well, their population growth dropped to zero and they died out,” said
Washu, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. “You can’t
continue the species entirely on a ‘G’ rating, you know.”

All eyes rested on Ryoko, with varying degrees of speculation. “You mean
that Ryoko . . . can’t . . .,” Ayeka began, as a tentative smile grew across
her face.

Ryoko herself was gaping in horror. “C’mon, *mom*,” she begged desperately,
“you’ve got to reverse the effects of this.”

"I can’t," said Washu. "There’s only one such gun in existence, and its in
the hands of Kagato. To create another would take me several centuries, and
by that time the effects of the ray will have worn off. Anyway, I think that
a little decent living will do you some good, my little Ryoko!” Washu
snickered. “You’re still too young to be thinking about those kinds of
things, anyway.”

“You listen to me you little . . . I mean, please, mom! How can I show
Tenchi how I love him now? You can’t do this to me!” Ryoko begged.

“Oh hohohohoho!” Ayeka cackled, having come to the same conclusions about
the implications of Ryoko’s condition as Ryoko had. “It looks like I won’t
have to worry about you molesting Lord Tenchi anymore. No longer must I act
as a chaperone to protect him from your lecherous clutches. But don’t worry,
Ryoko, I shall make sure that Lord Tenchi is not without womanly comfort.
Ohohohohohoh!”

Tenchi, on the other hand, tried to comfort the space pirate. “Don’t worry,
Ryoko,” he said cheerfully, “I don’t love you for your body!”

Unfortunately, Ryoko took Tenchi’s encouragement in exactly the wrong way.
Stung by his apparent rejection, she phased into the kitchen, sniffling
pitifully. What she needed, Ryoko decided, was a good strong drink while she
got a hold of herself.

“Good morning, Ryoko!” Sasami said brightly. “I’m almost ready with
breakfast. Can I get you anything?”

“Nothing for me, Sasami, I’ll just get myself some tea, once I have the
energy to look for it” Ryoko said, gloomily. She then sat bolt upright in
horror. Not that too! The voice, she could work with. The inability to talk
about sex, she could work around. That she could never score with Tenchi,
that was troubling. But to be cut off from the joys of sake was so
terrifying she could hardly even contemplate the dreadful possibility.

No, it can’t be. There must be a way around it. Ryoko tried to think of a
synonym for the object of her desire.

“Oh, I can get some tea for you,” said Sasami. “Just a second.”

“No wait, Sasami,” Ryoko said to the girl, “I meant that I want the
*special* brand of tea.”

“Oh. Uh, which brand is that?” asked Sasami, now a bit puzzled.

“Arghh! No!” Growled, Ryoko, now tearing at her hair. “I mean, *bad tea*!”
She looked around for a sake bottle, but she had the horrible feeling that
Kagato’s ray would somehow transmute the alcohol into some harmless drink
before she could get so much as a taste of it.

Sasami was confused, but tried to give Ryoko what she wanted. She ripped a
tea bag in two, scattering the leaves in a cup, then doused them with
lukewarm water. “Is this what you wante . . . hey Ryoko, why are you wearing
a swimsuit?”

But Ryoko was already out the door, calling for Ryo-Ohki. She would search
every hairstylist in the galaxy if she had to, comb every hidden place a mad
scientist might lurk, but she would find Kagato. Somehow she would get him
to have mercy and give her the antidote, or she would beat it out of him.
She would whatever it took to be free of her curse; his revenge was truly
worse than she could bear.

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Author’s note: I’ve only seen the Cartoon Network version of Tenchi Muyo!,
and in my opinion most of the editing they’ve done to make the cartoon
suitable for general audiences is for the best. Still, there are places
where the characters have amusingly strange reactions to apparently innocent
situations. I’ve only spoofed changes which are obvious from watching the
American version of the cartoon – I’m sure that someone familiar with the
original Japanese version can see changes I did not.

Any comments or criticism are welcome.

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