Shadows of Time

A Ranma ½ / Sailor Moon crossover fanfic by jimra

Why on earth would I claim these characters as my own? I mean, honestly! Do I WANT to be sued for every penny I make?

Author’s Note: So that no one thinks that this is a cop-out, this story was originally posted as ‘Disappearance,’ and I later removed that story, thinking to absorb it into another of my stories. That didn’t work out, and after some brainstorming, I came up with goal for the story and a way for it to stand on its own, so here it is in its new incarnation.

Chapter One: Memories and Dreams

Kasumi hummed to herself as she walked out of the hospital on her way home. She was in a good mood since she would actually be home in time to cook dinner for her daughter, and that was an all too rare occurrence for her conscience. Quickly making her way to the bus stop, Kasumi waited patiently for her transport home from Juuban Municipal Hospital. While she waited, she remembered, and remembering managed to kill most of her good mood.

It had been exactly eighteen years ago yesterday that Akane and Ranma had disappeared while on their honeymoon. They’d left their wedding for a small inn on Okinawa, but when the honeymoon was over, they didn’t come back.

As the bus arrived and she began the short ride home, Kasumi recollected all the changes caused by her sister and brother-in-law’s disappearance. Nabiki became obsessed with finding the two, and she had even delayed her entrance into Tokyo U to look for them. She bent all her resources, contacts, and time toward her search, and at first, she seemed to make great progress. Only a week after they disappeared, Nabiki had multiple witnesses saying that both Ranma and Akane had boarded the plane from Okinawa and had arrived safely at Narita, but after that, the trail stopped dead. Of course, that didn’t stop Nabiki from continuing her search, and Kasumi had watched her sister grow more and more despondent and depressed. There was many a night where Kasumi had held Nabiki as she cried, her inability to find the vanished couple eating her up inside.

Kasumi stared idly out of the bus window at the passing street as she thought about Nabiki. Her middle sister had finally stopped putting everything into the search after missing her first semester at college, but even to this day Nabiki still had her ears open for any hint of Ranma or Akane. Even the funeral couldn’t dissuade her from the search.

Passing the half way point to her home, Kasumi considered the changes in her own life in the intervening years. Once Nabiki finally left for college, Kasumi’s housework had greatly diminished. The eldest Tendo daughter finally allowed herself something SHE wanted to do: she started nursing school at the local community college. And there, she met Gendo.

Mizuno Gendo was a young man only a year older than her studying pre-med, but his calm confident attitude and caring, compassionate manner captured her heart almost from the first. Since pre-med and nursing share many early classes, Kasumi found herself sharing three of her five classes with the young would-be doctor. He was everything she had wished Tofu had been, everything she heard he was when she wasn’t around, but Tofu had disappeared long before Akane and Ranma, vanished on a sabbatical from which he never returned. After two semesters of taking classes with Gendo, Kasumi changed her major to pre-med, and the two began dating.

Kasumi sighed as she thought of Gendo; he never did become a doctor. After another year of classes, Kasumi and Gendo had announced their intent to marry, and they did only three months later. Shortly after their honeymoon at a small hot springs resort in central Honshu, Kasumi became pregnant, and nine short months later she gave birth to a beautiful baby girl.

The proud parents continued to make their way through pre-med, and later they moved to Juuban in Minato ward to continue on to medical school. Gendo progressed through school faster than Kasumi because she’d taken a semester off for her pregnancy, but after that they took turns taking part-time semesters to take care of their child.

Then, finally, it came time for Gendo to begin his internship at Juuban Municipal. Kasumi still had one semester of medical school before her own internship began, but she was happy for her husband. That’s when yet another tragedy struck her life. One day, shortly into his internship, Gendo was on his way home from the hospital when he was shot. The police believed that it was an attempted robbery, but that didn’t help Kasumi. With her medical knowledge, Kasumi knew that her husband could have been saved, but no one around him knew CPR. He lay there, not breathing, for eight minutes. When the paramedics arrived they were able to resuscitate his vital functions, but there was no upper brain activity. Kasumi was forced to terminate life support and let her husband go; a few tears escaped her closed eyes as she thought of that time.

Briefly, Kasumi opened her eyes. Seeing that she was still some distance from her stop, the middle-aged doctor lapsed back into her memories. After Gendo’s death, Kasumi couldn’t function for some time. Her daughter was only three at the time, so she did the only thing she could: she moved back to the dojo in Nerima.

Kasumi had become a woman of two faces for quite a while after her husband’s death. Unable to face the loss of the man she loved, the eldest Tendo daughter had retreated behind a brittle mask resembling the time she had had to act as a mother to her younger sisters, but many a night that mask was shattered by her grief. Only with Nodoka’s help was Kasumi able to get through that time, and the older woman, knowing grief well from losing her son, had been Kasumi’s pillar of strength when she simply couldn’t go on.

Finally, after nearly a year, Kasumi returned to medical school. When she and her daughter moved back to Juuban, her father decided to move in with the Saotomes. The Tendo dojo was left vacant.

Kasumi had finished medical school with honors only one semester later, and she started her own internship at Juuban Municipal in the emergency room. Gendo’s death had changed Kasumi’s original intention to become a pediatrician, and now she would work to save people in need of immediate care.

The driver’s announcement of her stop shook Kasumi from her reverie, and the middle-aged woman stood and exited the bus. Walking the last block to the small apartment she shared with her now sixteen-year-old daughter, Kasumi tried to turn her mind to happier thoughts. She thought about what she would cook for dinner and about her next day off when she would try to spend time with her daughter. Days off for an emergency trauma doctor were few and far between, but Kasumi was determined to make the most of them.

Finally reaching her building, Kasumi climbed the steps to the third floor and entered her apartment.

“Ami-chan,” she called into the darkened interior of the small suite of rooms. “Tadaima.”

After a moment, Kasumi’s sixteen-year-old daughter walked out of her bedroom. She was a beautiful girl with the slim, elfin face of her mother and her father’s cerulean-black hair. Still dressed in her school uniform, the girl’s sparkling blue eyes smiled at Kasumi, and Ami rushed forward to hug her mother.

“Mom!” she said, holding the older woman tightly. “I didn’t think you were going to be home until late.”

“I managed to get off early,” replied the elder Mizuno. “I thought we might have dinner together.”

It was then that Kasumi noticed another girl with the strangest hairstyle watching mother and daughter from the door to Ami’s bedroom. Recognizing Ami’s friend, Kasumi greeted, “Oh, hello Usagi-chan.”

“Konbanwa Mizuno-sensei,” replied the blonde.

Kasumi smiled. “Would you like to join us for dinner, Usagi-chan?”

The blond smiled brightly before replying. “I’d love to.”

A shorthaired, middle-aged woman tossed in her sleep. Goose feather pillows and silk sheets adorned the large, king size bed where she lay, but the extravagant bedding did nothing to mitigate the woman’s nightmare. She moved and twisted, the sheets coiling around her like a snake. And Tendo Nabiki dreamed.

Nabiki stood in Narita airport. The nightmare was one she had often, but the fact that she knew this was a dream didn’t put her at ease. Ranma and Akane were boarding their plane to Okinawa, and Akane turned to Nabiki before entering the gate.

“Thank you so much, Oneechan!” cried Akane, throwing her arms around Nabiki’s neck, and then there were two Nabikis. The first reacted just as she had that day; letting the mask of the ice queen fall for a moment, that Nabiki hugged her sister tearfully and made a smiling, sarcastic comment about what Akane would do on her honeymoon. The other Nabiki tried to scream at Akane, ask her not to go. As usual, Akane only heard the first, and then the young couple was gone.

As was common in this nightmare, Nabiki skipped the next two weeks, and then she was again standing in Narita. However, this part of her dream had never happened in the real world.

Nabiki stood in the terminal at Narita at about four thirty in the morning, and she knew without knowing that it was the day Akane and Ranma were to return. Every time she had this dream the same thing happened. Nabiki would watch as Ranma and Akane walked out into the terminal, smiling and laughing at some joke she never knew. And just like every other time, Nabiki could see the distortion coming.

Tears in her eyes, Nabiki rushed forward. She shouted to the couple, trying to save them, trying to make things different. Of course, it never helped. The couple, blissfully unaware of the distortion closing with them from behind, continued to walk at a leisurely pace. Nabiki’s shouts never reached their ears, and the businesswoman squeezed her eyes shut as the ripple closed with her sister and brother-in-law, hungering to take them.

She didn’t need to see to know what was going to happen. It was the same every time: the ripple would rush over her family members and they would vanish as though they were never there. However, something wouldn’t allow Nabiki to keep her eyes closed while the couple was swallowed by the anomaly, and the middle Tendo sister’s eyes flew open just as the distortion washed over Akane and Ranma.

A gasp was Nabiki’s world for a moment. Instead of the usual dream outcome, the distortion had no effect on either of the young lovers, and though it was irrational, just for a moment, Nabiki let herself believe that everything would be all right. Just for a moment.

The dream ended very differently from the usual one. Akane and Ranma burst into a run just after the ripple passed, and as they left the airport, Nabiki sank to her knees, crying. The dream faded around her sorrow and pain, and the most successful woman in Tokyo awoke to the darkness of her bedroom.

An ancient woman sat quietly in her room above a restaurant, a candle flickering fitfully the only witness to her meditations. Well over three hundred years old, the woman had long since given up sleep in favor of the meditation of reverie. With this technique, the old woman only needed to sacrifice a single hour to rest each day, but during this time she would relive random memories. Some were pleasant memories of home, of learning to be a true Joketsuzoku when she was just a girl or hunting with her sisters in the wilds of Jusendo. Others were sad or frightening: her first encounter with the Musk and when she had had to curse her own great granddaughter to satisfy Amazon law and honor.

However, the memory chosen for tonight’s rejuvenative meditation was one that would have been happy (though a bit embarrassing) had fate not twisted it painfully. And so the memory began.

It was the end of one of Nerima’s many battles. Ranma and Mousse stood facing each other in the much-abused vacant lot near the Tendo dojo while Shampoo and Akane stood on the sidelines, watching the men fight. The duel had reached a mutual pause when Cologne arrived, but it was obvious from the damage and numerous weapons scattered about that the battle was a fierce one. To punctuate that point, bruises covered Mousse’s face, and Ranma was bleeding from two or three small cuts.

Seeing just one more pointless battle in the war to win Ranma, Cologne chuckled quietly, but another sound quickly removed any humor from her countenance.

“Mousse!” Shampoo called enthusiastically. “You can win, Mousse!”

The Joketsuzoku elder looked at her great granddaughter in shock; even as a joke, Shampoo would never cheer for Mousse during a duel, especially one where Ranma was fighting. Cologne’s shock increased even more as Mousse ignored Shampoo’s cheering. ‘This isn’t possible,” thought the old woman. ‘Something must have been done to them.’

Her thoughts were interrupted as Shampoo called “Go, Mousse!” again, and Cologne took a closer look at the two girls watching the duel. The matriarch’s charge seemed to be her usual happy, bubbly self, but Akane was another matter. She seemed to have a dazed look on her face, one that Cologne recognized as a mixture of amazement and confusion. Obviously, she didn’t know what was going on, so that left only Ranma or Mousse, and with Mousse’s uncharacteristic behavior, that left only the son-in-law in her mind.

Cologne almost fell off of her staff when she tried to imagine the groom using magic against his Amazon suitor, and by the time she’d regained her composure, the fight had begun once more. Cologne decided that the strange behavior could wait until the end of the fight.

The battle had recommenced with Ranma leaping to a jump kick toward Mousse’s head, but the myopic boy was already throwing everything (including the kitchen sink) Ranma’s way. Of course, Ranma’s speed and skill in mid-air combat allowed him to dodge all of the projectiles, but what surprised Cologne was the lack of whining from Mousse. Just as she started pondering this, the close-in battle began, and what she saw took Cologne’s breath away.

Mousse was matching Ranma move for move and blow for blow, an impossible feat for the boy a mere two months ago. By the time Cologne had finally caught her breath again, the combatants had again paused, both breathing heavily. This time, the girls rushed forward, and yet more uncharacteristic behavior was displayed. Not only did Akane hand Ranma a towel without insulting him, but Shampoo ran immediately to Mousse and did the same.

Finally a piece of this puzzle became clear as Mousse walked toward Ranma slowly and put out his hand. “Good spar, Ranma,” he said, smiling.

Ranma, for his part, smiled back, took Mousse’s hand, and shook it firmly. “You’re getting a lot better, Mousse.”

‘Obviously,’ Cologne realized, ‘the son-in-law has been training Mousse. But they’ve never been on good enough terms for that.’

To Cologne’s continued amazement, Shampoo was still fawning over Mousse, and Mousse was continuing to ignore the object of his love. This bore looking into, and the ancient woman hopped on her staff over to Ranma.

“Son-in-law,” she said slowly. “I’d like to talk to you. Would you mind coming back to the Nekohanten with me?”

“Sure, Honored Elder.” Ranma’s reply was almost enough to cause the old matriarch to face fault; only years of intense discipline allowed her to remain on her staff. Then again, all that training wasn’t enough to save her when Shampoo kissed Mousse.

*WHAMM!!*

Cologne slowly picked herself up out of the dirt and looked at her lavender-haired great granddaughter as the girl tried to win an intense tongue war with Mousse. For a moment, Cologne allowed the possibility that Mousse might be worthy of her charge, but only for a moment.

“Alright, that’s enough,” Cologne almost shouted. This complete departure from the usual was getting on her nerves. “What the hell is going on here?”

As if he meant to make things just that much worse, Ranma slipped an arm around Akane’s waist and asked, “What ever do you mean, granny?”

Having lost what little patience she had left, Cologne unceremoniously slammed her staff down on Ranma’s head. While normally this wouldn’t do much more than cause a little pain, Cologne was angry, and this amounted to one unconscious Ranma. Not even waiting for Akane to protest her actions, the Joketsuzoku elder picked her would-be son-in-law up by his collar and jumped away over the Neriman rooftops.

Finally, Cologne arrived at her destination: a small park near the Nekohanten. She dropped Ranma in a pile near the swings and lit her pipe; if her calculations were correct, he should be waking from her blow any second. Indeed, just as she got her pipe going, Ranma awoke with a groan followed by his customary “Wadja do that for?”

Cologne smiled for a moment before answering, thankful that some things were still the same. Then she replied, “I know you’ve done something to Shampoo and Mousse, and I’m not letting you go anywhere until you tell me what it is.”

To her surprise, Ranma didn’t offer denials or excuses. In fact, the young Musabetsu practitioner smirked in a very Nabiki-like manner when he answered. “I decided I was tired of being the prize in your little hunt, old ghoul, so I took one a’ yer love potions an’ used it on Shampoo. According to the instructions, if it ain’t cured by sunset, she’ll love ‘im forever.”

Cologne’s eyes widened as Ranma explained, and she gasped when he described the love potion’s effects. She recognized it, and luckily, she had the cure back at the restaurant. However, that didn’t answer all of her questions.

“Ranma,” she said in a hard voice. “That doesn’t explain Mousse. What did you do to him?”

“Mousse?” Ranma spent a moment in thought. “I didn’t do anything to ‘im. Ohhhh! You mean why he’s gotten so much better and he’s not pining over Shampoo! I’ve just been training ‘im over the last month. I told ‘im I’d help ‘im get Shampoo, but ‘e had ta follow my instructions exactly. Looks like it worked…at least with the love potion, anyway.”

Despite being angry with Ranma for doing all this, she couldn’t help but respect that kind on ingenuity. Cologne chuckled for a moment, but then she asked, “Ranma, are you really so adamantly opposed to marrying Shampoo? Was this really necessary?”

Ranma scowled. “I don’t see what else I coulda done! You guys were using all that magic junk against me, an’ Shampoo woulda been punished pretty bad if she went back without a husband, right? So I figured I’d kill two birds with one stone, ya know? Get my revenge for all those dirty tricks and keep Shampoo from gettin’ punished. I mean, I don’t hate you amazons; I jus’ don’t like bein' manipulated an’ all.”

Finally, Cologne laughed. For once the groom had a good point: turnabout was fair play, and Cologne really couldn’t blame him for not wanting to be manipulated.

“So, you intend to marry that girl Akane?”

Almost instinctively, Ranma started to reply, “What?! That uncute tomboy!?!” but then, his face softened visibly, a smile almost forming on his lips. “Yeah, honored elder. I am gonna marry ‘er. She may be an uncute tomboy, but she’s my uncute tomboy, an’ I wouldn’t ‘ave it any other way.”

Finally, Cologne understood. There would be no persuading Ranma to marry Shampoo; he’d made up his mind. In the end, the amazon elder had expected something like this, if not so well thought out and played. For some time she’d had a contingency plan, and now the matriarch of the Joketsuzoku decided it was time to enact it.

“Ranma,” the old woman began. “I’ll make you a deal. If you and Akane both agree to join our tribe, I won’t cure Shampoo. Since you’ve been training him, it looks like Mousse might very well be worthy of my great granddaughter, and since you’ve been so kind to her in your rejection, I can be willing to compromise.”

Ranma looked thoughtful for a moment, and he surprised Cologne again by answering, “Tell you what, granny. Lemme talk to Akane an’ we’ll both stop by the Nekohanten later with an answer.”

“Very well, ‘son-in-law’,” answered Cologne. “Just remember that I have to cure her before sunset if you don’t agree, so the deal’s off in four hours.”

Ranma smirked at the name, but there was a strange ease between young and old since Cologne had given the martial artist some modicum of respect. “Don’t worry, ‘old ghoul,’ I’ll remember.” And with that, Ranma ran off.

Cologne’s eyes opened as the memory drew to a close, her eyes staring into the candle’s flickering flame. Ranma and Akane had indeed come by the Nekohanten that night, and after asking quite a few very pointed questions, the young couple had agreed to her terms.

One month after the agreement was made, Ranma and Akane got married. Cologne agreed to allow the young couple their honeymoon before they traveled to Jusendo for formal induction into the tribe. Ranma would have joined as a female, and Cologne truly had high hopes that her former son-in-law would have become an elder herself one day.

But that was eighteen years ago. Ranma and Akane had vanished just after returning from their honeymoon, and with that, all of Cologne’s hopes for her tribe shattered. After returning to Nyuucheizu with Mousse and Shampoo to present them to the council, Cologne had returned to the Nekohanten alone. Shampoo and Mousse visited her two or three times a year, but she mainly spent her time alone.

Officially, Cologne was maintaining the restaurant in Japan as a Joketsuzoku way station and safe house, but in the council-members’ minds and in fact, Cologne was in self-imposed exile until she could either find Ranma and Akane or avenge them. Even though they weren’t true members of the Joketsuzoku, Cologne was still grooming Ranma to become an heir to her knowledge and position, and Akane was his life mate. She felt responsible for them, and so she remained in Japan.

The old woman sighed; just for a moment, she felt every minute of her age like lead in her bones. Finally, Cologne stood and flicked on the light. Once she’d extinguished and put away the candle, the elder extracted a book almost as ancient as she was and moved to sit, but her nightly reading was not to be. Just as she reached her old rocking chair, the phone rang.

Now, a phone ringing in a restaurant is not normally a very uncommon occurrence, but when that same situation is placed in the time frame of five o’clock in the morning at a restaurant only open from eleven to nine, one can see how it might be considered strange.

The ancient Joketsuzoku elder muttered to herself as she made her way down into the restaurant’s dining room. Nabiki had urged her to put a phone upstairs, but she believed it would be more of a disruption than a blessing. Now, she was re-evaluating that supposition, but her grumbling ceased when she answered the call.

“Moshi moshi.” Cologne’s voice sounded annoyed and gravelly even to her own ears.

“Elder Cologne.” Tendo Nabiki’s voice at the other end of the line piqued Cologne’s interest. Just after Ranma and Akane disappeared, Nabiki had almost fallen apart.

While everyone knew about her breakdown, Cologne was the only one who knew the actual cause. Nabiki’s dreams had nearly driven her insane; for the first few months after the young couple vanished, Nabiki had had the same dream every night, sometimes more than once a night. It was only with Cologne’s help that she had finally been able to get on with her life, though she still didn’t drop the search for the missing pair. Since Cologne had helped her, she and Nabiki had become very close, and a call from the eldest woman still called Tendo always rated some importance in the Joketsuzoku Matriarch’s mind.

“Nabiki-chan,” Cologne said, her voice soft, even a bit caring. “What’s the matter? I haven’t heard you this upset in some time.”

While most people wouldn’t have heard anything but her usual, frigid tone in Nabiki’s voice, some people could penetrate her mask of ice. Cologne was one of those few.

“I…I dreamed again, tonight,” Nabiki replied hesitantly, her voice cracking slightly.

“I know the dream upsets you, Nabiki-chan, but you are going to have to put it behind you. Honestly, you can’t call me anytime you have the same dream you’ve been having for the last eighteen years.” The tone of Cologne’s voice robbed most of the sting from her words; the line was silent for a moment.

“I—I understand, Cologne-san,” Nabiki finally replied. “I’m sorry for bothering you.”

‘She must be more shaken up about the anniversary than I thought,’ Cologne thought.

“Don’t worry about it, Nabiki-chan,” said Cologne. “Tell you what. Come by the restaurant tomorrow and we’ll talk about it.”

“Alright,” said the Tendo woman, her voice a little stronger. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Oyasumi, Nabiki-chan.”

“Oyasumi-nasai, obaasan.”

Author’s Notes:

As with the prologue (as said in that AN above), I am resurrecting this story under a new title; one that has gotten my creative juices flowing stronger in regards to this story than they have in a very long time. In any case, I hope to complete chapter two fairly soon. Later, all.