Ukyo was cleaning the grill of her restaurant when the door opened. She looked up ready to great her new customer and was confused for a moment when she didn't spot anyone at the entrance. Ukyo shifted her gaze down thinking that a kid might have rushed in. Her eyes kept going lower until she spotted a somewhat familiar red furry creature walking on all fours.
Whatever the creature was completely escaped Ukyo's mind and that was before she saw it start to stand up on its hind legs and walk upright. Did someone get a new curse and no one bothered to tell her? It was hard keeping herself in the loop with the local gossip grapevine given her newness to the area and the hours she had to pull running this restaurant. Things had gotten even harder now that the mercenary Tendo had apparently closed down business due to things getting too hot for her. The reason why that had happened was something Ukyo tried not to think about.
The thought of a new curse reminded Ukyo of Ran-Chan's new form. She could think about those muscles later when she wasn't on the clock. Then it was like the proverbial lightbulb came on. This was that new fellow who showed up to heal Ran-Chan. Ukyo watched with interest as the little guy walked over and crawled onto a stool near the grill.
"Excuse me," the little guy said very politely. Ukyo watched as the fellow pulled a wallet out of somewhere before continuing. "I was wondering if I could have a large beef okonomiyaki. I've been told that the best okonomiyaki in the district can be found here."
Ukyo smiled and said, "I like to think that's the case mister. Can I get a name to go with your order? A large okonomiyaki with beef on it will cost you 500 yen. 50 yen more and you get one bottle soda to go with your meal. I've got Coke products and spring water bottles."
The little guy gave a nervous smile as he pulled out the coins from his wallet. "My name is Snarf and I'd like to have a bottle of water please." He then put the money in the bowl Ukyo had by the grill for that purpose. That surprised Ukyo. Snarf wasn't Japanese if she remembered correctly and most foreigners tended to not know how one was expected to treat money here. Either the little guy was better educated that most she had dealt with or he picked up on things quick.
As Ukyo was making the okonomiyaki she casually asked, "by the way. Who recommended my place to you?"
Snarf looked up and said, "Lord Ranma mentioned this place as a good one to go for Japanese cuisine. He said that you make the best okonomiyaki he has ever had."
Ukyo chucked and said, "That sounds like Ran-Chan." She soon found herself drawn into a long conversation with Snarf and was doing most of the talking without thinking about it. Snarf listened attentively to what she had to say and even placed a couple more orders of smaller okonomiyakis to 'taste the menu'. That these orders allowed Snarf to stay where he was talking with her slipped over Ukyo's mind. The little guy was a friendly ear that honestly tried to understand her situation.
Just before the dinner rush started Snarf spoke up, "This has been a wonderful chat, Ukyo. However, it seems your main customers for the day are starting to arrive and I still have several duties I need to attend to today. Please reconsider my offer on learning Thunderan. May you have a fortunate and productive time until we can meet again." Snarf then hopped off of his stool and slowly made his way to the exit.
Part of Ukyo wanted to wish the little guy a good day. The customers heading for her grill were a higher priority. It was the same with Snarf's offer to teach her Thunderan. It would be cool to learn a magical language with Ran-Chan. The bills that she needed to pay took priority. Business before pleasure was one of the few lessons she wholeheartedly agreed with her own jerk of a father on. Ukyo was happily charming weary office workers looking for a quick bite to eat and unable to see Snarf leave her restaurant.
Snarf exited Okonomiyaki Ucchan's and had to fight the urge to sigh. Part of him wanted to blame Queen Serenity for the situation Lord Ranma was in. However, he knew that the old queen didn't have the power of the inclination to screw his lord over this hard. The old queen was not actively malicious; she was just an airheaded ninny that didn't know what kind of powers she was messing with. Still, it would be nice to have someone to blame for Lord Ranma ending up in a situation more suited for a rom-com.
Lord Ranma's father looked like a good target to blame. However, things weren't so simple. Genma did have a major involvement in the Kuonji engagement. On the other hand, Ukyo's father had persisted even after Genma had initially mentioned the Tendo engagement. It was the elder Kounji throwing in an okonomiyaki cart that caused Genma to agree. Most people from what Snarf had gathered had stopped asking questions once they found that out. Snarf did not.
Some investigations at the library had revealed to him that a good used food cart would sell between 500,000 to 2,000,000 yen depending on the quality, condition, and features of the cart. Genma apparently didn't keep the cart for long. Snarf also knew from Lord Ranma's descriptions it never seemed like his father got a large infusion of cash for the training trip. Things did not add up and so Snarf started to do some more digging as per his training.
Thanks to some careful planning, Snarf was able to get ahold of Genma's bank book along with other legal documents and scanned a copy of them to his shuttle's computer. he was able to go through the data later on and found something interesting. It seemed that Genma was paying for the services of a law firm company around the time of the Kuonji engagement with some steep fees and there were fees from a local court. It seemed that Sabato Rinne was suing Genma for control of an estate trust set up for Nodoka Saotome. From what Snarf could tell, something with the lawsuit seemed to have frozen a lot of Genma's assets making it hard to get the cash to pay for the legal fees. Those fees happened to be in the range of what one could get for selling a used food cart.
A picture of the situation had started to form for Snarf. Genma had needed a lot of money to keep control of the trust that belonged to his wife and he wasn't able to use his own money due to the court rulings. The offer of the food cart represented the money Genma needed for court costs and in a moment of weakness, he took it. Subsequent bank statements showed that Genma had tried to pay the elder Kuonji back the price of his cart once Genma's assets were unfrozen. That still left the honor issues from the incident that were still lingering for Lord Ranma.
Ukyo didn't know many of the details exactly. However, Snarf was able to get her to corroborate far more than she realized once he got her talking about the situation. The girl was young, in love with his lord, and part of a situation that made Snarf want to smash his head into a cinderblock. Snarf had been trying to understand the complexities of Lord Ranma's future marital situation so that he could best advise him.
What Snarf now understood was that something drastic was going to have to happen to sort everything out. Exactly what that something was he couldn't say. He just hoped it didn't bite everyone in the ass when it happened. It also didn't help that almost every party involved was using a slightly different honor ruleset with the Amazons having the most divergent honor system from the Japanese parties. Even among the Japanese the rules of honor weren't exact in all the details. The Tendos and the Saotomes seem to use an honor code for the samurai whereas the Kuonjis used an honor code for ninjas. Very similar codes that were almost the same, but with some very small and critical differences. That wasn't considering the concept of 'saving face' that was so alien to Snarf.
Perhaps Lord Ranma should just take all of them as his wives when he moved to Thundera? Multiple partner arrangements were extremely rare, but not unheard of before the Fall. It wasn't like Thundera, Saturn, or even the Silver Millennium as a whole had any laws against such an arraignment. Socially discourage typically, but that was one of the few areas that the Silver Throne hadn't written microfilm codices that were bigger than he was.
There was the potential issue of the future line for the Senshi of Thundera to consider. When a new current holder of a Sailor Crystal first assumed the position of holder of the sailor Crystal their heir to the crystal was locked. The position of crystal holder and first heir could only change with the death of one of the two or if an heir was born where prior there was none. It couldn't be adjusted to changes in the line of succession and wouldn't automatically revert to the political heir of the throne and instead followed the rules of succession from reference point of the current holder.
That had caused plenty of problems for the Silver Millennium and its prior forms in the past as the ruling houses tried to keep the position of princess and the position of senshi close. Some worlds went to some rather extreme methods before the end of the Sixth Interregnum. Venus's mandatory incest to breed the political line back in the senshi line was a good example. Another one was Mars's forced fratricide upon the ascension of a new princess.
The Lunarian method that became the norm after the founding of the Silver Millennium was one of the better solutions in Snarf's opinion and took advantage of both the Isu and especially the Senshis long lives. Under that system, a crystal holder had 1 child and waited to have others until the heir of the sailor Crystal had a child of their own. The system was great for stability given that even a regular Isu could live for 1,000 years and spend the vast majority of that time in their physical prime.
Such a system would not be optimal for the Thunderans right now given their shortage of potential holders for the Sailor Crystal of Thundera. Ranma wouldn't have to worry about furture dynastic quarrels as much since the Thunderans wouldn't have the expectation of the 'Lord of the Thundercats' and 'Senshi of Thundera' being the same person like was common for the princesses after the Second Interregnum. There was even the title 'Champion of the Thundercats' that was usually given for the second in command of the Thundercats when the Lord of the Thundercats could not be in direct command. Perhaps that title could be used for the future Senshi of Thundera if the two lines drifted?
Snarf fought the urge to smack himself upside the head as he tried to refocus his thoughts. Now was not the time for coming up with solutions to problems that were at least two generations away. In order to have that potential problem to solve he needed to figure out who was supposed to end up in Lord Ranma's bed. He had been trying to find out information to see if there was a reasonable way to solve this mess without everyone having major issues with the resolution.
The little guy wanted things resolved amicably so there was less of a threat to Lord Ranma and his future children. Snarf could just fly Ranma and his bride or brides back to Thundera to keep them safe from attacks. He would prefer not to use that option yet as there wasn't a lot of space in and around the Cats Lair that people could move about in without spacesuits. Lord Ranma as the holder of the Sailor Crystal of Thundera wouldn't have any issues, but his wife would.
Genma sat in the dojo with Ranma sitting across from him. In the elder Saotome's lap rested the family honor sword, not that Ranma recognized it. Genma had gotten the sword from Nodoka so that could have this lesson on the family history. Ranma looked at his father wondering what the sword was and why his father had pulled him into the dojo while requesting that they'd be left alone.
The elder of the two took a deep breath before beginning to speak. "Son, as you get older you are taking the steps to grow into the man you will become. I am sure by now you have noticed the rise in shall we say unusual situations that have been occurring to you over the past year compared to your youth or what regular people experience?"
Ranma nodded his head once in agreement. He wanted to make a wisecrack, but held in the urge. Something told him that now was not the time for such things.
Part of Genma was pleased that Ranma wasn't mouthing off. About time the boy learned when he needed to shut his mouth. Genma kept these thoughts to himself as he continued much as his father had to him when he was Ranma's age. "This rise of unusual situations at your age is not something unique to you. I went through such things myself at your age as have all your family members since the start of the Saotome Clan. It is not a curse, but it seems to be tied to the origins of our family. The origins of which I will now go into complete detail as you will no longer dismiss critical details as fanciful nonsense."
"Two hundred years before the Sengoku Jidai there was a yokai of great power known as the Inu no Tasho. This yokai had two sons and forged swords for them out of his own fangs to help his children grow. The elder was a powerful yokai whose heart lacked compassion and understanding. The younger was a hanyo who was comparatively weaker and was mistrustful of others. To the elder son the Inu no Tasho gave Tenseiga which would not harm any of the living world while allowing one to see and slay beings of the underworld. This allowed Tenseiga to bring up to 100 beings back to life in a single swing. To the younger son the Inu no Tasho bequeathed Tessaiga which had the power to kill a hundred yokai in a signal swing so long as the wielder fought to defend human life."
"The elder brother was unaware of the caveat to Tessaiga's power and was furious that he was given a 'worthless' sword while his younger half-brother was given such a powerful weapon of war. The two brothers fought for a long time over their inheritance. Tokijin, the sword that the Kuno boy used against you, was even commissioned by the elder brother to have a weapon equal to Tessaiga. I've verified it by double checking the clan records."
"Slowly the elder brother began to learn the lesson his father had tried to teach him with the help of a young girl. This girl was the very first person the elder brother ever used Tenseiga to help. The elder brother would eventually travel to the underworld and fight its forces to rescue the girl as Tenseiga will not revive someone twice. It was during the journey to the underworld when the elder brother finally internalized the lesson his father intended him to learn. This allowed the elder brother's power and warrior spirit to crystalize into the sword Bakusaiga."
The elder brother would eventually go on to marry the woman he rescued and had a pair of twin daughters with her. As neither child needed to learn the lessons that he and his brother needed, the elder brother was a bit more traditional in bequeathing his blades. To the younger daughter Setsuna he gave the blade Tenseiga." Genma paused to hold up the Saotome honor blade.
He nodded in approval as Ranma's eyes widened in shock. "Yes son, the family honor blade is Tenseiga. Setsuna spent her youth fighting against yokai that wished harm on the people. Eventually, Toyotomi Hideyoshi arranged a treaty with Setsuna's father who by that point commanded all the non-antagonistic yokai of Japan. As a part of the treaty Setsuna was married to an illegitimate son of Oda Nobunaga that Hideyoshi was fond of."
"This son, whose existence was obfuscated by later Tokugawa shoguns in their efforts to hide the existence of potential mystical threats, was the only child of Nobunaga to inherit his father's mystical powers. The media are actually right for once when they show movies giving Oda Nobunaga mystical powers. He really was the avatar of Mara and thus wasn't talking out his ass when he called himself the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven. The man's mother was supposed to have been a very powerful seer who helped Nobunaga plan out his campaigns demanding the child as payment for her services."
"It is the connections to the mystical in the very origins of our family that ensures that every generation is drawn into interesting times. This is why the shogunate took us into their service and kept us around even when they further obscured our origins. Our very existence served them as unpaid mystical troubleshooters."
Ranma sat there trying to absorb everything he had been told. He hadn't really thought that much about his family's history before. Why bother when they were dead and couldn't help him to become a better martial artist? Sure, he knew that his family were descended from samurais and that his grandfather had served in WWII. It was just that he never thought about who lived further in the past.
As Ranma thought about what he was told, a question came to him. "What about the other members of the Inu no Tasho's family? Why did you include them into the story if our family focuses its descent on one of his granddaughters?"
Genma smiled seeing that his boy was thinking. "Partially, I told the story because it has virtues in the lessons it teaches. I also told it to see if you would ask such a question. The line of Sesshomaru, who is the elder brother in the tale, elder daughter Towa had its main line end in the Bakumatsu. A daughter of the line who married into the Tomoe clan inherited their belongings, but further contact was lost to our family after that."
"The line of the younger brother Inuyasha is a little more complicated." Genma paused to pull out a photo his sister had sent him. Ranma looked at the photo in shock as it had his cousin Kagome chatting in her kitchen with a dog-eared boy with white hair wearing very old-style red robes. "As you can see Ranma, Inuyasha and your cousin are caught in a situation where they are both traveling to and from our time and the Sengoku Jidai."
Ranma nearly sputtered from shock. He never imagined Kagome as having issues like he did! A moment later Ranma was able to think about what pops had told him and he realized something. Inuyasha's family line being complicated and a time traveling cousin equaled something worrying and Ranma was hoping his math was wrong. "Wait don't tell me that?"
Genma sighed and nodded his head. "That your cousin is destined to eventually stay back in the Sengoku Jidai as Inuyasha's wife? I'm already helping my sister deal with the fact that her daughter will be dead before she was chronologically born. At least Soun's family records show that she will live to be in her 90s before she passes and have many descendants to spoil."
"What?!"
"Keep your voice down Ranma! This is why I told you the world doesn't revolve around you. Your life so far has been one of the stranger ones as far as Saotomes go, but you're barely in the top 10 weirdest lives so far. Kagome has had you beat for almost two years now. And yes, the Tendos are descended from Kagome and Inuyasha via their daughter Moroha. Soun has Tessaiga locked away in his bedroom somewhere."
"One of the reasons I've been staying away from my sister for these past two years is I didn't want to risk you getting tangled up in the time traveling mess. You were completely unprepared for the level of fighting that your cousin is involved in when things started. Even though you can handle yourself now I still don't want to risk you messing things up. Kagome's in a rather unique situation right now and doesn't need to know what her destiny will be."
"Now," Genma's tone took on a completely new level of seriousness as he looked at Ranma. He then handed Tenseiga over to Ranma in a reverent manner. "This sword will not be yours hopefully for many decades to come. I want you to hold it now and try to feel the weight of what you will have to manage as a grown man. It is sadly very easy to kill a man. What is not so easy is to pull someone back from the dead and restore them to true life. Many people have wasted their lives looking for something similar to the power of Tenseiga."
Ranma took Tenseiga and held it. He could feel a mystical connection to the katana that was part of his inheritance. Its power was real and Ranma could feel in his bones that this was a deeply magical weapon. The closest thing he could think of was the feeling he got from the Sword of Omens. However, the feel of the two swords were very different from each other. The Sword of Omens felt like a big cat on the prowl certain of its domain and ready to fight all who were foolish enough to challenge it. Tenseiga felt like a wolf quietly and calmly stalking its prey certain that the kill would happen when it deemed to act.
Tenseiga was no mere sword with magical abilities and was alive in its own way possessing its own intelligence. Long had the sword guarded the line of its original master and was satisfied in its task. The blade sensed its future welder had great potential; far more than its current master or the one entrusted with its maintenance. Tenseiga could tell that its future master had a strange other form and was bonded to another blade.
Such things were not a problem for the old fang. Its masters had long been a varied and unique lot even if it was kept in the line of its original master. Why should it be bothered that its future master spent time as a cat-being but not a yokai? The fact that its future master had another blade was not a reason for concern. Even the original master had the second fang to deal with the mortal world while it dealt with the spiritual world.
What interested Tenseiga was something that it could sense through the future master. The future master was connected to a great well of power. That well seemed to be connected to another well of power and from that well Tenseiga could sense an old companion. Tenseiga's power awoke letting out a mystical and audible howl.
This howl reverberated throughout the Tendo compound and through Ranma's Sailor Crystal. Ranma then heard a howl through his being that sounded like some sort of answer. He then felt Tenseiga's contentment and saw a small glow emanating from the sword. The blade unleashed a second howl and then became inert. All Ranma could think about was what the hell just happened?
Everyone was crowded into Snarf's shuttle as the little guy tried to figure out what had happened an hour ago. Ranma was lying on the shuttle's bunk with a glowing cloth covering him while Snarf fiddled with a glowing golden orb that was projecting symbols into the air that only he could understand. Genma and the Tendos looked on the scene with curiosity and worry.
"You know", Nabiki muttered dryly, "That thing on Ranma looks like a burial shroud if you take away the glowing lights."
"Nabiki!" Kasumi hissed in displeasure. "I know you have a dry sense of humor, but that comment was both uncalled for and out of line."
The middle tendo sister shrugged and said, "I'm just calling it like I see it Kasumi. This stuff Snarf's using doesn't look like anything else he has in this shuttle."
Snarf's ear twitch and he spoke to the crowd behind him. "That is because this shuttle is Thunderan in origin while the medical cloth and control interface orb are Edenite who were another ethic group sworn to Saturn. The Edenites were a hybrid group formed from the offspring of dalliances between the Isu who were the main species of the Silver Millennium and the humans of Earth. Edenites could vary from nearly pure Isu to nearly pure human leading to their medical technology to be very flexible compared to the rest of the Silver Millennium."
"My shuttle's medical technology is designed to work on Thunderans and Snarfs. I wouldn't want to use it to treat a human unless there was no other choice. That is why I packed these and a few other pieces of Edenite magitech with me when I came to Earth."
Kasumi then asked, "Why not turn Ranma into his thunderan form if your technology is designed to work with thunderans? Wouldn't that be better than using something you're not as familiar with?"
Snarf unexpectedly snapped at Kasumi. "Not a chance! Only a complete fool plays around with magic or technology that they do not understand. Something happened to Lord Ranma while he was in human form that we do not understand. Triggering his transformation could have negative effects or alter the results of any test to figure out what happened"
"And in answer to your other question Kasumi Edenite technology is not that unfamiliar with me. We were both sworn to the same planetary princess and members of the Silver Millennium after all. Aesthetic and user interface differences aside, most technomagic in the Silver Millennium was the same under the hood so to speak. This was true even for very divergent groups from the high court culture of the Silver Millennium like Thundera or Eden."
Suddenly, a giant purple glyph for Saturn was projected by the control interface orb. Then a column of Edenite text appeared next to the glyph that Snarf read in amazement. Snarf spoke in a reverent voice and said, "The princess was reborn as well!"
The little guy put his hand in the air and seemed to type at an invisible keyboard. The medical shroud on Ranma stopped glowing and the control orb stopped projecting images. Snarf looked over at Ranma and said, "Lord Ranma I have completed my scan. Would you like me to take the shroud off of you?"
"Nope, I got it." Ranma said as he sat up pulling the magical sheet off of himself. That was one weird and creepy experience that Ranma would rather not repeat. He wasn't about to mention that for fear of giving the kami even greater odds of such a thing happening then there already was. Hopefully he wouldn't be too messed up when they threw him under there again. Ranma spoke again once he was completely free of the shroud. "What happened when I held Tenseiga and what is this about a princess?"
Snarf turned to look at Ranma and said, "In just a moment Lord Ranma." Snarf then turned on the shuttle's main holographic projector showing an image of Saturn and Thundera as they were before the Fall. He then spoke. "Before the creation of the Sailor Crystal of Thundera, all the biospheres of the Saturnian system depended on the Sailor Crystal of Saturn. Your Sailor Crystal takes over as the primary crystal supporting the biosphere of Thundera and acts as a backup for the rest of the Saturnian system while the Sailor Crystal of Saturn take a backup role for Thundera. This is because the two crystals are entangled with each other. It's sort of like the entanglement of particles that some of your physicists talk about."
He looked at the assembled group and saw the dumbfounded looks on everyone's faces. Snarf scratched his head and muttered, "Oh snarf, you aren't following what I'm saying."
Genma spoke up. "Soun and I have seen a lot of things Snarf and we've both made efforts to avoid physicists. They tend not to like us breaking the laws of reality as they see it. Besides, when they start talking it sounds more like witchcraft then hearing actual witches talk about magic."
Snarf tried an even more simple and watered-down description. "The Sailor Crystals of Saturn and Thundera are connected to each other."
Akane had a thought when she remembered what Snarf had mentioned about Sailor Crystals the other day. "But aren't Sailor Crystals part of their wielder's soul? Doesn't that mean that mean that two are soul mates?" Both fathers were not amused at this line of questioning.
A pained groan escaped Snarf as he smacked his head. "Not that old con job again. There is no such thing as soulmates, eternal perfect partners, a 'destined one' or any other sort of nonsense name you want to call it. The Silver Millennium did many exhaustive studies validating many earlier studies proving that such things don't exist. That baloney was created by some playboys looking for ways to woo their way into the beds of pretty airheads."
"At most, the connection between the two sailor crystals when both crystals are active will give Lord Ranma and the reborn Princess of Saturn a general feeling of where the other is and maybe a vague feeling of each other's status. There is a very minute chance that with decades of intense training they might, just might, be able to talk telepathically to each other using the crystals' connection without help. It a great bonus for a bodyguard to have when working with the person they are to protect."
Soun let out a sigh of relief. It was good to know that the Saotome luck was not bringing another complication to delay his little girl's future marriage any more than it already was. That still left an important question that he voiced. "But what caused Tenseiga's reaction? Genma and I did not have such a reaction when we show each other our families' swords."
The little guy quickly answered the Tendo patriarch. "Tenseiga is a semi-sentient magical artifact of a make that is unfamiliar to my equipment. I would need to take it back to the Cats Lair for better analysis to give you a more complete answer. However, my shuttle's systems were able to pick up the words 'old companion' and 'fellow fang' in the sword's mystical matrix before such concepts disappeared from their ability to sense."
"From that I can assume that the princess's reincarnation has a powerful magical artifact, likely a sword, that Tenseiga was used with in the past. Tenseiga sensed this through Lord Ranma's Sailor Crystal and basically sense a 'can you hear me' message through the link."
Author's note: I thought I would address here some of the backstory that I have built into the Saotome family. As some have commented, the Saotome family's background connects Ranma to the other characters in Rumiko Takahashi's completed works. The revealed family tree is as follows:
1580s-1590s Setsuna (from Hanyo no Yashahime a tv spin-off of Inuyasha) marries an unnamed man founding the Saotome Clan. Please not that this fictious person doesn't come from any source material that I am aware of. Moreover, the Mara that I am having Oda Nobunaga be the avatar of is not an Oh My Goddess reference. That is the name of the actual Buddhist demon that the title "Demon King of the Sixth Heaven" belongs.
1940s Ranma's Grandfather serves in the Imperial Navy and has some misadventures with Yuta (Mermaid Saga) getting the sea stories passed on to Ranma. At the same time Rinne Rokudo's grandfather has his fateful encounter with Tamako (both from Kyokai no Rinne). Since I couldn't find a name for Rinne's grandfather I gave him the name Hagoromo in an obvious nod to the Naruto series. I also created a younger brother who will go on to father Nodoka (Ranma) with the unnamed older sister of Yusaku Godai (Maison Ikkoku). I also have it that the Rinne family are descended from Kenshin Himura and Kori Kamiya (Rurouni Kenshin) the only non-Takahashi manga in the Saotome family line and in this story, the source of the red/orange hair.
1950s Ranma's Grandfather has Genma (Ranma) and the future Ms. Higurashi (Inuyasha) with his wife whose brother happens to be Ataru Moroboshi's father (Urusei Yatsura). The others of Genma's generation are born in this decade.
Late 1960s Genma and Soun (Ranma) have their youthful misadventures and the general events of Urusei Yatsura happened. The future masters of Anything Goes were basically background characters in that series, but not as often as they would have preferred.
1974 Ranma Saotome (Ranma) is born. Thanks to Sabato (Kyokai no Rinne), Nodoka has her past lives brought to the surface in a very unstable manner. Later in the year Kagome Higurashi (Inuyasha) is born
1976 Rinne Rokudo (Kyokai no Rinne) is born
1990 Senshi of Thundera starts