Ranma and the Star Trek series are owned by their respective owners and the characters are used without permission. This work is purely a labor of love and not intended for profit of any time.

"What's happening?" he asked aloud as the shaking got worse.

"You're dying, and there's nothing you can do about it."

To Stop a Changing River

Chapter – 1

Things to come

Relaxing into the large first class seat of the commercial jet, a battered and exhausted black haired man with a pigtail, dressed in a tank top and gym shorts, let off a long sigh. It had been a very tiring couple of weeks. He let his mind wander back to the recent events as the passenger plane started down the runway.

It had all started with a phone call from an Okinawan shrine in need of help tackling the case of a missing fox spirit that protected the local area. The kitsune had been known to go absent from time to time, but never during the main growing seasons, and the farms had started to fail. Petty crime started to rise in the area as well. When news had started to spread through the priest and martial arts circles, the man's mother had thought it was the perfect opportunity to bring some much needed recognition to the dojo, which he and his fiancee had reopened only months prior.

"Ranma, you really should go look into this." His mother started in after she finished reading the letter addressed to the dojo. "You have the most experience in dealing with spirits from anyone else I know." Ranma shifted his attention back to his fiancee as she broke into the conversation.

"She's right you know. It's not like we're struggling or anything, but the name recognition would do wonders for the security of our school. It's not like I can't handle things around here while you're gone." She added with a soft smile.

"I suppose you're right." He sighed, wondering about how long this would take. "I really hope it doesn't take too long, the Nerima ward of Tokyo never stays silent for too long."

Well, he smiled to himself, someone had answered his prayers. As far as he knew, things had stayed fairly calm while he had been gone. Granted everyone had started to calm down as they had started up at, and graduated from, the local university. There was still the occasional scuffle, though. The plane made its final bank as it steadied out towards its main flight path back to home. He let his thoughts drift back to the recent events.

When he had first reached the island things had been perplexing. Not that he had much to go on, spirits usually looked for you, not the other way around. He lucked out when a minor oni had come to harass the neighboring town. After besting it at arm wrestling, best three of five, things had really started to take off. He had learned that the kitsune's boyfriend, one of the local racoons spirits, had been gone for a while and she had gone to look for him. He was pointed in the direction of a hidden island nearby that he'd need a special stone to enter.

"Be careful, little bro, last time I saw Genki he was very nervous. Watch your back" Green Oni waved to him, smiling, as he left the village with a new goal in mind. The Gate Stone. Last time it had been seen was in the main land of Japan.

Ranma looked out the window, noticing the ocean beneath them. Its beauty clashed with his natural feelings towards that particular body of water, which had kick started the more mystical aspects of his life. The curse never really bothered him anymore, he'd had it for nearly seven years now. He guessed that he normally spent at least thirty to forty percent of his time each year as a girl now. Changing back to a man seemed less and less urgent each year as it just became part of the normalcy that was his life.

"Beverage, sir?" He was broken from his thoughts as one of the flight attendants grabbed his attention.

"Do you have any hot tea?" He may no longer care about being a man one hundred percent of the time, but he knew when a good time to do so was. Boarding a plane as a man and trying to leave as a woman probably wouldn't end well.

"Of course." The cheerful girl reached into her cart for a cup before pouring and handing Ranma his tea. As she left he reflected onto his last adventure some more to pass the time while enjoying the relaxing aroma and flavor of the hot straight tea.

The Gate Stone, of course, had not been an easy find. It had required him to go back to mainland Japan. He ended up finding it at a collector's home in Kobe. After accepting an emergency engagement agreement, allowing for either family to use in the case of procuring an heir, he had been on his was back to the shrine to start locating the hidden island. He really hoped that Akane didn't hold that engagement deal against him, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

He smiled as the main island of Japan came into view. It was always comforting to see the land you called home. He'd been all over the world in his relatively short life, he had even lived in America for a brief stint as a foreign exchange student. Still, seeing the main island of Japan still made him happy in a way he couldn't describe.

The Island had been easy enough to find, granted he had a really lucky break in that Toma's island had been nearby at the time. The prince had offered the location of the island happily, though with a warning that most that ventured there usually did not come back. Well, it never was like him to quit halfway through anything, and he had not intended to start at that time. He did, however wish someone had told him exactly what he was getting into.

At the center of the island, which itself was not too big, was an oasis of sorts. As he was instructed he tossed the stone into the center and had been quite surprised to watch the water split into a staircase. He started down the staircase, not sure of what to expect.

Some mild turbulence broke him out of his musings as the plane entered a small weather system that had come north quicker than expected. Seeing the clouds out of the window made him chuckle. The curse at work, he knew, but he was protected from the sudden shower in a pressurized cabin that the water couldn't get through. He made a face out the window aimed at the clouds before sinking back into his seat.

It had taken hours of walking down the staircase, taking him lower and lower into the earth. What he found at the bottom he would have never expected. He had wound up on a massive cliff face easily the height of the Tokyo Tower. It stretched around in a circle in what he guessed was easily a twenty-five kilometer radius. The only reason he'd seen the other side was a massive jewel floating at the top of the gargantuan cave, giving off an otherworldly light. There had been a city, not unlike Tokyo itself, that spanned the bottom of the cave.

He broke off from his musings as nature started to call. Looking out the window he noted that the weather system had passed already. Leaving his seat he was thankful that the seat next to him had been open. The flight was pretty empty, leaving him plenty of room to move about if he had wished. He took care of business and made his way back to his seat. Feeling a little peckish he ordered a snack. The best thing that had come from his adventure had been the wealth that he accumulated. He couldn't help it if that little bit of his dad in him appreciated having become filthy rich. First class really was the only way to travel. He smirked, remembering the city of spirits.

He had no idea what the place was at the time, only that it resembled a modern city. The only problem to him was that it was hours underground. He had to climb down the sheer cliff face, which was difficult even for him. When he had entered the outskirts of the city, things didn't seem that strange. That massive jewel had mimicked a clear sky. It was the inhabitants of the city that had set his internal alarms buzzing. The entire population had been oni, spirits and monsters!

"Hey, isn't that a human?" A kappa spirit asked, pointing at Ranma with no reservation.

"Nah, it couldn't be." The ghost next to him wheezed out. "There hasn't been a living human here in almost twenty centuries."

"I don't know, man." This time it was a large blue oni that started talking. "That sure smells like a human. My memory's a bit fuzzy, but I'm almost certain.

Ranma smiled remembering his surprise at the situation. Every time in his life that he'd encountered just one spirit it had meant trouble for his life. He had stumbled into a whole metropolis full of them. It was like trying to find a needle in a hay stack. Poking at his clothing as he remembered the first couple of days where his belongings we destroyed in a fight with a fire spirit and he had a run in with the crime lords repeatedly. It hadn't taken him long to become and enemy to the law either, considering no other human had entered the place since it had been sealed two thousand years prior.

Ranma ducked down an alley, R'hal's thugs now behind him, and the law in front. Captain Jun must have been laying in wait.

"Get that human! He'll go for a good price any day of the week!" One of the thugs bellowed out.

"Get that human! He'll pay for the crime of being a human!" He heard Jun's voice over a loudspeaker. With no other option, and not really wanting to get 'got' Ranma opted for up. Bouncing from wall to wall as fast as he could he made for his old ally, the rooftops! None of the spirits were able to follow. The Heart Gem made the city as real to spirits as any physical object is to humans. It was used to make sure that the human world couldn't easily find and destroy the last of the spirit cities because of the criminals that would surely try to go to the surface.

He looked out the window of the plane again, this time at the mountains below. Japan was seventy percent mountains, so it was no surprise that there were so many that it looked a little like a jagged design passing below. It was pretty nice looking. City wasn't all bad though. wasn't all bad, though.

"Who are you!?" The purple haired girl shouted as she curled up in her blankets for protection. "Explain now before I call the guards!"

"Look, I'm sorry for crashing through your sky light," Ranma started, picking himself off the stone floor, "I was expecting a park through the tree tops, not a manor." He bowed as apologetically as he could, the last thing he needed was the thugs and the law finding him again.

"You're different," She observed, squinting at him. "What are you?"

He recalled her face, the cute pout she had when she learned that he was human. At least he wouldn't have to worry about the promise he had made to her for a nice long time, if he had anything to say about it. Hopefully he could just avoid telling Akane about that one as well.

"I might help you out on one condition," Fu said with a small smirk.

"Yeah? And what's that?" Ranma asked, a small sinking feeling rising up in his stomach.

"When you die, I'll barter with death himself, and have you brought here to be my husband." She said with a small blush while poking her fingers together. "You are, after all, the first man from outside these walls to see me without my robes on..." Ranma's face lit up like a Christmas tree.

He did owe her, though, she had really come through. With the help of her and her family resources, he had been able to find the kitsune. It turned out that her boyfriend had gotten mixed up with the criminals and had been working for them, kidnapping various spirits to sell to others, spirit and human, as slaves. Unlucky for her, she had been captured as well, after all it wasn't everyday that such a powerful and beautiful spirit naively wandered into the city of spirit's underworld.

Before he could continue his thoughts the gave a mighty lurch. The cabin began to bounce around in a way that made him very nervous. Looking out the window out of pure reflex he noted no clouds or and weather patterns as far as the eye could see. Just mountains.

"What's happening?" he asked aloud as the shaking got worse.

"You're dying, and there's nothing you can do about it."

The last thing Ranma expected was an answer so clear and calm. Looking to his side he noticed a man like none he'd ever seen before, not to mention seen since the flight had started. The man was wearing black and red robes that seemed otherworldly in their own right, especially how the headpiece melted into the robes.

"What's going on? Did R'hal send you?" Ranma's body tensed as he prepared to do what he could to save as many people as he could. Two thoughts shot through his mind; 'I'm sorry, Akane.' and 'Well, Fu, looks like you'll be seeing me a lot sooner than I thought.' "Did you do this to the plane?" Raising his arm to the air, no longer focused on him, the man simply snapped his fingers.

"No, sadly, I didn't cause the plane to crash, as fascinating as it will be to watch." the man lamented, seemingly oblivious to the danger of the situation. "No, you were always suppose to die here at this time." Time around them seemed to start slowing down, the cacophony of the cab lightening eerily as the man looked back to him. "Not done in by the antics of your fiancees gone too far, nor one of your rivals getting lucky. Not even in a heroic battle, protecting the ones you love. Your fate has always been one of the faceless aboard flight number twenty-six bound for Narita, victim of engine failure." Time started to noticeably churn to a halt, making the hairs on Ramna's neck stand on end. There was nothing natural about this situation, or this man. "I, however, have a use for you beyond being part of the statistical data of this time. You see, there are forces at play, threatening to take away my father's fun. Not on purpose, mind you. Normally I would find it endlessly amusing to see my father thwarted by lesser beings, but if my father looses his favorite plaything, well, I cease to exist." The man's face turned into a wry grin, "And I happen to enjoy existing as much as the next inferior being."

"What do you mean, 'cease to exist?'"

"You're about as quick as Aunt Kathy at the best of times." The man murmured to himself. "Look, let me make this simple for you. I'm technically from your future, as far as your primitive perception of space and time is concerned. I can be anywhere and do anything I'd like. However, if time is thrown out of whack, well there's a chance that I can't fix it, as loathe as I am to admit that. Someone has managed to bend the meandering flow of time and the river is starting to shift away from the point of which I'm most fond, my origin."

"So why tell me any of this if I'm just going to die anyway?" Ranma asked, his voice cutting clear through the silence of the frozen time around him. His answer was a bark of laughter, the man's face twisting into a superior grin.

"Whoever has achieved this has clearly not understood what it means to annoy me to the point of retaliation. I'll explain it in a way that even your half evolved gray matter can grasp. You see, when someone places some rocks to change the flow of a river, you place a massive boulder in the way to trump the smaller rocks. It balances everything out in the end."

Ranma wasn't quite getting what the man meant. "Couldn't you just remove the smaller rocks?"

"Where's the fun in that?" the man's expression was one of bemusement on that point. "I'm giving you a chance to continue living. Not a choice, but a chance. You mess up and I'm gone. If I'm gone, then you die here anyway. Don't try to figure it out, your brain is obviously not a muscle you exercise too much." The man started to stand from his seat, grabbing and pulling Ranma up with him in a move that the martial artist hadn't noticed or felt. "You have one goal, and that is to do what you do best, survive. If I'm right, and I always am, placing the boulder that is you in the path of the bend should resolve everything and make it all but impossible to change this particular event again, well without my power anyway."

Time started to pick back up and the screams of the passengers and the deafening roar of the cab quaking at the mercy of turbulence started to overload Ramna's hearing once again. He started to get worried. He had expected this strange man to do something, take him somewhere different. Instead the man started laughing while holding him in place.

"This is going to be so much fun!" The man called out, as the world shattering noise that was the nose of the plane meeting the side of the mountains, which were before just an afterthought while looking out the window, erupted into darkness.

AN: Thank you, everyone, for taking the time to read my second piece. I have been having trouble moving forward in RVG, not that I don't know where I want to go with it. Quite the opposite. It's like I'm Les Stroud (sp?) trying to get to the town from the middle of the forest. I know the direction, just not the correct path yet. Please leave a review or two as the story progresses. I will be using some of the back story introduced here further down the road to help give the story a decidedly Ranma twist later on, so you may see more from the characters introduced here. I intend to start up from early season 1 of Enterprise and move forward from there all the way to the end. It won't be easy, but I hope the ride will be worth it!