I suspect a ton of people will be asking me, "what do you mean there's no baby? That would be a perfect excuse for Chamiko to talk to each other! Kimi-cup is suddenly pregnant and drama and stuff and then we get a happy ending!"

Yeah...no, that's not how the Hoduku Mouse works in my universe. In your own personal universes, you can have it act like a One-Way Ticket to the Past like Jack's Time Machine, just be aware that's not how I like it working.

So, you see, all we canonically know is that it fixes mistakes. I've chosen to have it do this, not the Rio Reverso way that I've seen in one fic where something is returned to it's original form, I've chosen to accomplish the fixing of mistakes by relegating that job to the person holding the Shen Gong Wu. The mind, not the body, is transported to the past, and combines with the version of you in that timeline, keeping all the memories of what is, and what could have been/what happened in the alternate timeline. But you can only go so far. If you had only just grabbed the SGW and tried to use it immediately to...oh, I don't know, go back to 4th grade to prevent yourself from stepping on your future husband's favorite dinosaur toy, then tough luck, but you can't go back to a time prior to the first time you touched the SGW.

And in fact, to keep the timelines relatively stable, it's not your mind persay that goes back in time, but a copy of your mind. The original you would be staring at the mouse, probably wondering why it didn't work, or maybe even deciding not to use it after all. And now you all have another question, "but Dusk! Wouldn't someone eventually go crazy thanks your theory? Is THAT where the Xiaolin Chronicles Chase comes from?"

The answer, simply put, is yes.

But you see, the human mind is a powerful thing, and it copes with such confusion and chaos by making you slowly forget whatever is causing it. And the potion I have Chase drink in all my stories with the mouse, allow the forgetting to happen quicker and with less confusion and chaos. Of course, anyone that uses the Mouse to go back more than a few days, would occasionally get an inkling reminder of what could have happened, call it deja vu, but it's always put from their mind once enough time pasts by for them to forget or blame any inconsistencies on a faulty memory.

My personal suggestion to Chase (and by extension, Kimiko,) don't use the Hoduku Mouse to go back more than a month or if anything majorly significant happened. Don't forget about the Phantom Limb/Pain effect I've included with the mouse in another of my stories and really should have mentioned in this one too.

"Ten minutes later, he's fully healed and uses the Hoduku Mouse to return to the second Omi and he starts fighting again. If he had used the mouse before he was healed, he would have still felt phantom pain and would have been unable to concentrate. He knew this thanks to a similar, but in his opinion, less painful situation a few hundred years ago when he fought Guan and came out, victorious, but with a nearly severed arm." It Was A Mistake, CH13, Not According to Plan, where Chase gets knocked in the jewels.

So that's why I ended the story the way I did. Kimiko remembers that she's pregnant, but only her mind does, and she'll likely soon forget as her past self and future self reconcile their minds to create a present self. No, Chamiko baby. I'm sorry...but I have it on good knowledge that some stories with Chamiko kids are in the works by other people that are much less likely to show you the kid and then kill it. On the brightside, just remember, according to the rules I've set into the Hoduku Mouse, I've only shown you the version where the mouse works and sends Chase and Kimiko's minds back in time, but there's another timeline where they're both quizzically staring at the mouse, wondering why it's not working, or maybe Kimiko managed to blurt out she was pregnant before Chase said the words. And now they're raising their son and/or daughter. ^_^