Card Captor Sakura Fan Fiction / Neon Genesis Evangelion Fan Fiction / Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction / Sailor Moon Fan Fiction ❯ A Fistful Of Omake ❯ SM: The problem with time travel ( Chapter 16 )

[ P - Pre-Teen ]

The Problems With Time Travel
by Metroanime (aka Gregg Sharp)

"Rei, are you all right?"

Rei held her head, trying to dislodge the sudden influx of visions which had overwhelmed it. "Oh."

Makoto frowned. "Heck, that's weird. I feel it too, like..."

"Like waking up from a bad dream or something truly terrible has just passed us by," Ami frowned. Whatever it was, it was certainly interrupting the study session.

"It was unpleasant," said Hotaru.

Everyone blinked.

"Why is Hotaru-chan here?" Usagi asked, then hastened to add a clarifier. "Not that you're not welcome."

Lots of puzzled expressions.

The door slid open and a boy none of them could recall seeing before stood there. "Venus? Jupiter? You're all here, you're alive? It worked? Thank..."

Everyone had gone from disturbed to puzzled to flabbergasted as this strange boy fell over and slammed into the low table they were surrounding. Ami added a side order of guilty relief as the boy missed her by a few inches.

Ami was up immediately and checking for a pulse. Finding none, and signs that the boy had been *crying* made this even more puzzling. "He's dead?"

"Okay, what the heck is going on?!" Minako was beyond flabbergasted. Usagi had gone into shock but she wasn't saying anything. "Why do we suddenly have a boy here who knows our Senshi identities and..." Minako ran out of steam abruptly. Dead? And why did the boy look sort of familiar?

Makoto looked at Ami trying to open the boy's clenched hand and used her own strength to force it open. The cause of death was immediately identified by everyone there.

"The Silver Millenium Crystal?!" Ami noted, then directing a questioning glance to Usagi.

Usagi fumbled for her brooch and checked, then showed everyone how the crystal at the center was missing.

"ARrrrgh!" Makoto said with considerable feeling. "Why? How? Someone tell me what the heck this means!"

"...and how we're going to deal with a dead body here." Rei pointed out helpfully. "How do we explain *this*?!"

"It's simple, time has been changed."

"WAAUGHHHH!"

As soon as everyone peeled themselves off the walls, Rei made a simple request. "Setsuna-san, can you just use the door like everyone else?"

Setsuna walked up to the boy and reached out to close his eyes. "Well, *now* you've earned my trust. Go gently, dutiful soldier."

"Whoaaa whoaa WHOA! Time-o out-o!" Minako held her hands up in a "T" formation. "What do you mean? Is this another menace from a Dark Kingdom, Black Moon, Chartreuse Wombat or something?"

"'Chartreuse Wombat'?" mouthed several of the sometimes Senshi.

"The sanctity of the timestream," began Setsuna.

"Stop!"

Everyone looked at Usagi. She rarely went into Princess mode, but it was showing now, the steel behind her usual fluff.

"Explain this, Setsuna." There was no hint of her usual ditziness. Rei bit back a comment as Usagi suddenly had that aura of authority around her.

Setsuna sighed and found a seat-cushion. "Fine. Can I at least get a cup of tea?"

---------

The tea had been hastily fixed, and now the body of the unknown boy had been laid off to the side where it wasn't sprawled inelegantly across the table. Besides, now they could close the door.

"It's simple enough," began Setsuna, "though where to begin?"

"This boy's from the future. Sailor Venus and Sailor Jupiter were... killed. This boy somehow got the Silver Crystal from Usagi and used his own life-force to bring them back." Ami said into the silence, putting together the clues.

"I died?!" Minako's hair went into wild cowlicks suddenly.

Makoto twitched a few times. She didn't like dying.

Setsuna looked unhappy but spoke as soon as Minako had stopped twitching. "I looked into the time loop as soon as I noticed something had changed. We all died."

"WaaaahhhH!"

Ami ignored Usagi's wail. "But what about Crystal Tokyo?"

"Created as a mockery," said Setsuna, her eyes closed as she remembered the horrible visions.

Many looks at the boy again, this time with a jumble of different emotions.

"Who's the boy?" Minako finally got out.

"Your boyfriend. Not trusted by myself, or Luna, or Artemis, and especially not by Haruka."

(sniffle) "I got a boyfriend and he's dead before I got to meet him?" Minako was ready to start a full blown crying jag at this.

"A new enemy occurred, someone who could mask themselves through time. I still wasn't able to see them clearly. Just that one after the other of our ranks fell. Sailor Mars was first, then Venus, then Jupiter, then Mercury, then Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Endymion, and Sailor Moon."

"You didn't die?" Rei asked the obvious question.

"Eventually," said Setsuna, shuddering slightly.

"How did we die?" Ami asked, thinking that if the menace were still out there they needed to develop a defense.

"The enemy is faster than we can get off attacks apparently. I couldn't see the enemy but I could see how the future versions of ourselves tried to fight it. After Sailor Mars was ripped in half, Sailor Moon went into shock and couldn't function. After that it apparently got in between your ranks and struck. It uses physical attacks backed by great strength and what was apparently a hard carapace or shell."

"How could you tell if you couldn't see it?" Minako asked in the silence following Setsuna's remark.

"Because when it punched through Sailor Jupiter's head, the remains sprayed out over quite a large area. Are you *sure* you want to know these details?"

Makoto slowly got up, excused herself, went outside and threw up.

"From what I further saw, this boy who had been told not to follow us, did so anyway. Minako was going to have to break up with him, since she'd already blown too many secrets during the Cherry Blossom Festival when she'd had entirely too much sake. He apparently didn't care. He snuck in, got past the Beast, and used the Crystal."

"So, he's..." Minako's gaze towards the dead boy was wistful. He wasn't cute. Still, just a boy who liked her enough to throw his life away for her? She finally gets a boyfriend and someone who understands her and he's dead before they finally meet?! What kami had she offended?!

"Not a member of the Royal Family. Not a member of the Silver Imperium. Just a normal everyday boy who saw the need to do something and did it even though he knew from one of Minako's stories that doing so would likely kill him."

Everyone spent a few moments looking towards the dead boy.

Ami tried to get images of exploding Makoto heads out of her mind. "Uhm, so..."

"Unfortunately, he wasn't that good at things and made some assumptions, so when he rebuilt the timestream there were a few changes." Setsuna frowned slightly. "Unfortunately, the Crystal does not come with an Operator's Manual."

"What kind of changes, Setsuna-mama?" Hotaru spoke for the first time.

"Well, first off, you're not staying with Haruka or Michiru." Setsuna glanced over the crowd. "You've been staying with Makoto."

"Well, that at least makes a certain amount of sense," said Ami. "After all, when they first met her it wasn't long before they *were* trying to kill her."

"That also explains why I'm here," Hotaru said, vaguely remembering something like that. Makoto saying she liked to cook anyway and there was extra room for another futon shortly after that bit in the planetarium. Hadn't that happened?

Setsuna sighed. "There's also the matter of Ami's fiance."

"WHAT?!" This almost qualified as a sonic assault.

Ami merely fidgeted and blushed and shrank in on herself while hoping he was cute.

Setsuna sighed again, unhappily. "This outrageously inept father tried to teach his son a special martial arts manuever called the 'Catfist' by throwing his son repeatedly into a pit of cats while the child was tied up with fish sausages."

There were several "eeew"s after that, but this was tame after the other news of the day.

"So... wait. I remember. There was a little boy and his father offered to engage me to him in return for medical treatment. My mother mainly wanted to get this boy away from his father so played along in the hope that the father would do something really stupid in front of witnesses so that the child could be saved from the next such lapse. His name was Run... Rum..."

"Ranma Saotome, your fiance and Makoto's sensei in Anything Goes martial arts," said Setsuna now rubbing her temples as if she had a migraine. This had not been a crossover timeline previously. "You're remembering it because the past is beginning to catch up. You were partly shielded because the change occurred very close to here."

Ami nodded and began writing details out in her notebook. She hoped he was cute.

"Waitaminute, Ranma Saotome?!" Usagi blinked. "I remember that name!"

"Yes, he was also engaged to you and to Rei and to any of the daughters Tendo and to Ukyo Kuonji," Setsuna said to Usagi. "I really need an aspirin."

"Ukyo Kuonji?! He was my sempai!" Makoto said brightly as she finally got back. "Waitaminute, my sempai was engaged to another guy?"

"Ukyo Kuonji is a girl who dresses up as a guy due to an oath she made," said Setsuna. "Make that an extra-strength aspirin."

Makoto sniffled as her sudden vision of being reconciled with her sempai crashed and burned.

"If you use the Silver Crystal, you *might* be able to fix it, Usagi, but I wouldn't bet on it." Setsuna normally didn't drink but was considering getting very very drunk at this point.

"Waitaminute, Ranma as in 'Ranma 1/2'? I have a manga on that right... Well, I *had* a manga." Rei blinked as she finally caught up. "*I* am engaged to Ranma Saotome?"

Setsuna couldn't help but smirk briefly. "Yes. 'Terrible tragic story' of young shinto shrine maiden tomboy who get engaged by great grandfather to son of wandering martial artist."

"That's crazy!" Rei exclaimed, a bit of panic in her eyes.

The smirk vanished and Setsuna winced. "I *really* need a headache pill. Or three. You don't have the manga anymore because timelines got crossed and now all that actually occurred."

"And he turns into a girl when splashed with cold water, turns back with hot, arrogant martial artist with no people skills? Father turns into a panda?" Rei flinched. Oh sacred flame, she did not like this.

"Is he cute?" Ami asked from somewhere within the blushing huddle.

"What about *my* boyfriend?" Minako asked. "He's dead over there."

"GET ME SOME ASPIRIN DAMN IT!" Setsuna rubbed her forehead. That hadn't exactly helped.

Rei scurried off. Everyone else just stared.

"AH! His body vanished!" Minako pointed. Great, now she didn't even have an ex-boyfriend.

"The past is catching up... oh no." Setsuna felt like beating her head against the table except she was already in serious pain.

"What?!" Minako was hopeful.

"Rei isn't engaged to Ranma anymore," noted Setsuna as Rei returned. "An eddy in the timestream wiped that and gave her a different fiance."

"What?!" Rei almost dropped the bottle of aspirin.

"Rei is currently engaged to someone else who manages shrines. A boy from Okayama named Tenchi Masaki. Do you mind giving me that aspirin now?" Setsuna took the bottle, shook out three of the painkillers and slugged them down with the last of her tea.

"Tenchi Muyo?!" Rei said with more than a trace of disbelief. "Well, that's a little better at least."

"Wow! Am I engaged to anyone, Makoto-mama?" Hotaru asked cutely, not even realizing that she was now fourteen years old.

"I don't know, Hotaru-chan. So Rei's engaged to a guy named Tenchi, Ami and Usagi are engaged to Ranma Saotome who is also my martial arts sensei?" Makoto asked. She was almost afraid to ask if *she* were engaged to someone.

"Oh, screw it," said Setsuna uncharacteristically. "*All* of us are engaged."

"WHAT?!"

"Oh, wait one moment. He didn't close the loop. I can undo all this!" Setsuna came up with an eerie light in her eyes. "That way only the Weakest Link would have to die."

"EXCUSE ME?!"

"I will *not* be engaged to Ryouga Hibiki," declared Setsuna. "Oh, Haruka, when did you get here?"

Haruka straightened his tie and wished that he could have shaved this morning. "Uhm, anybody notice something *different* this morning?"

Everyone (except Setsuna) shook their heads wildly on seeing a more masculine (and in need of a shave) Haruka in the doorway.

"Let me guess," said Minako after Haruka had walked away. "My dead boyfriend whose name I still don't know thought Haruka was a guy?"

"Apparently," said Setsuna.

"What happened to Luna and Artemis anyway?" Ami had just noted that the two mooncats were missing.

"Taking a sabbatical after they found out Ami's fiance suffers from extreme ailurophobia." Setsuna picked up the crystal that Usagi had apparently forgotten about. "I need to get busy."

"WAIT!"

Setsuna abruptly vanished. Everyone looked around at each other.

Ami watched her computer. "Temporal wave detected. Reaching us. NOW."

"I'm still here," noted Hotaru. "I wonder if I'm engaged still?"

Ami looked down at her notes. "Apparently I'm still engaged to Urawa-san."

"That's nice," offered Rei. "Do you suppose anything's changed?"

"Well, there's the picture of you and Yuuichiro after that bit with the daimon train girl," noted Usagi. "So he's probably still your boyfriend."

"That's not all that comforting you know," said Rei with a wince.

"Another temporal wave," said Ami after her computer beeped. "3,2,1. Ok."

"Here's the picture of when Haruka and Michiru split up." Minako sighed. "Well, with Haruka being such a flirt it was bound to happen sooner or later."

"Excuse me, look for something that's *changed*," advised Rei, looking about her with her scarlet eyes. "Though it might be that something already has changed and we wouldn't necessarily know it."

Everyone stared at the short-haired albino briefly.

"What do you mean?" Usagi asked, wondering if this was just more introspection on the part of the pale girl. Rei could be so weird some times.

"If our pasts, and everything with them changed, how would we know?" Rei Ayanami, Sailor Mars, began doing something that everyone that knew her dreaded. She was getting philosophical. "After all, do not our pasts shape us as individuals? If Tsukino-san was not so fastidious and so concerned with her skills as a practitioner of Wing Chun style Kung Fu, would she have been able to defeat Eudial in that battle? If Mizuno-san were not such a practical joker, would she have pursued Urawa-san - much less caught him in a snare trap until he agreed to marry her? Do not our individual pasts shape our present which in turn becomes our future? If..."

"Another temporal wave," interrupted Ami before Rei could build up too much steam. "Whatever Setsuna is doing, she's apparently having trouble. 3, 2, 1."

Everyone started looking around.

Serena offered a guess. "Is that a new jacket, Amy?"

Amy tugged at her WWII bomber jacket that she'd gotten from her cousin George. "No, I just don't wear it a lot."

"Nan desu ka?"

"Speak English, Hotaru, I know your Dad is very traditional Japanese but we lost that war a long time ago," advised Serena. "Besides, you're staying with Lita right now anyway."

"We're still costumed crimefighters, aren't we?" Mina nervously checked and gave a sigh of relief when she found her mutant powers of light generation were still intact. The Dazzler could still battle evildoers it looked.

Amy heard a beep and pulled out a heavily modified PDA. "Another temporal wave approaching. Uh oh. Looks like there's been a Hulk sighting in Nerima!"

This time the temporal wave was visible and seemed to carry the sound of Sailor Pluto swearing like a, well, like a sailor.

"I take it things are not going well at the Gate Of Time," grumbled Takeo Mizuno. Tuxedo Mercury hoped this wouldn't take long, he was missing soccer practice for this!

Yumemaru Tsukino, aka Tuxedo Moon, stretched his shoulders. "Well, what can we do?"

Mika Chiba, the sometimes Sailor Terra, just looked at her boyfriend and wondered what was going on.

Another wave and sound of someone inventively swearing.

"Pika?" Makoto inquired. "Pika pi pikachu?"

"Cle. Clefairy fairy fair," noted Usagi.

Ami sighed. All her pokemon were having a conversation and she was having to spend time working with her pokedex.

"um um umbreon," suggested Hotaru.

"Jiggly! Jigglypuff puff puff," insisted Minako.

"Char!" Rei disagreed strongly.

Another wave passed, this time with the sound of someone pleading for it to work this time.

"Nothing different," said Ami, taking a moment to look at herself in the mirror of her compact. She didn't see anything different, or was her fur slightly lighter along the bridge of her nose?

"Where's Master?" asked Hotaru, chewing nervously on the tip of her tail. She knew it was a bad habit but this sort of thing made her nervous. Of course, lots of things made her nervous - it was something about a lot of mouse-types.

Another wave though the sound accompanying it sounded like someone weeping.

There was a few moments of silence, which was broken as Sailor Pluto reappeared. She stared at each of them as if looking for anything out of place then let out a deep relieved sigh. "Thank kami. Everything's fixed. Here you go, Usagi-san."

Usagi took the crystal back then looked up at Sailor Pluto. She looked *awfully* stressed out.

"I think you need to schedule some quality time with your boyfriend," advised Minako.

Setsuna froze, then slowly turned, one eyebrow twitching. "*What* did you say?"

"Yes, Pluto-san," said Belldandy as she put down her teacup, smiling up at the twitching Sailor. "I'm sure Urd or Skuld would be happy to watch the Time Gate briefly."

*THUD!*

"You know, this is the first time I've ever seen Sailor Pluto faint," mentioned Minako.

"This is fate," insisted Rei.

------------

The model of time travel and changing futures doesn't stay consistent within the Sailor Moon series, so i thought i'd have some fun with it. Take it cool, people!