Disclaimer: UNBETA'D. I own nothing. Recognizable characters and events belong to other people. Together with the original characters and events, they collectively own my soul.
This is a companion piece to Times Storms: Nabiki's Story. They should be more or less self-contained even though they are obviously intertwined. I do not plan on any other separate stories in this universe, but you never know. Most likely other people's perspectives will be contained within these two stories.
Warning: In later chapters this fic will contain shojo-ai (femslash) and possibly shonen-ai (slash).
The Queen's name was Usagi. It was odd, thinking about her having a real name. Ranma found that it made her seem more like a person. The Queen had been ideal—a beautiful, precious creature to be protected. A statue with a kind aura, like a goddess or something. Usagi was more annoying. She was real nice and all, but she whined with this nauseating high-pitch and she talked too fast.
She only did around him too. When it was Hitomi's turn to take care of her, she reverted to the Queen, silent and determined. The goddess protecting the Estate. He knew 'cause he spied on them sometimes.
Actually, she was like that most of the time, distant and still, immersing herself in that crystal of her's to keep up the protective barrier. Like that, she made him feel peaceful and respectful, like the really good mikos he had met sometimes. When she collapsed into sleep she looked exhausted and vulnerable, calling up all of his protective instincts. Awake and talking though, she pulled at his soul and his sanity. She knew all of his secrets. Hell, she knew stuff about him Ranma hadn't even admitted to himself before!
It wasn't like she came out and said it. But she'd be babbling about missing her friends and make an off-hand comment about how someone named Rei had a temper like Akane's. Every time she let something like that drop, he'd tense up. She'd just steamroll right past it though, talking a mile a minute. She missed all her friends too although she was glad enough not to have to deal with school.
He sympathized. It sounded like school was boring all over, not just in Furinkan. Not like they ever taught anything useful anyways. He knew how to research and all that—he knew everything there was to know about how to resurrect dead martial arts out of long-lost scrolls or how to find out what kind of demon was terrorizing him. Who cared what China's major export was or how to say "Where am I?" in English anyways? Okay, so that last bit was probably pretty useful for Ryouga, but Ranma didn't ever intend to go to America. Stupid foreigners didn't have any real martial arts, just stuff they borrowed from Asian countries. And guns.
Really, Usagi didn't wake up all that often anyways. Most of her time and energy was spent keeping the Estate safe. Sometimes though, when she'd slept long enough but didn't have to get back to the crystal right away, she'd talk to him.
The first thing she had said when he got back from his time away from the Estate was "It's so lonely." Those were the first words he ever heard from her. He and Hitomi had decided to take turns spending time with her after that. One of them would be patrolling or cooking or cleaning and the other would be feeding the Queen or just sitting with her. He even gave Hitomi some martial arts lessons in the Queen's room.
He kept track of when she went to sleep and when she got up, even when it was Hitomi's turn to watch her. When she went to sleep, he'd stay closer, sneaking by occasionally to see if she was talking to Hitomi. She never did.
When it was his turn to watch while she slept, he'd sit by her bed, trying not to stare at her. He waited for her to wake up and start talking. She never seemed to censor herself, just like he hadn't when he talked to her, even though she was talking to a real person and he had just been talking to a kind of statue. She told him about her friends and her family. She told him about being Sailor Moon and how scared she had been sometimes. He felt good after listening to her, even when he was annoyed because she'd spent the entire time whining or squealing over her boyfriend. "My honeybunch is sooo perfect! He's handsome and romantic and just too dreamy!" He preferred the squeals, as much as they hurt his ears, to the times she was quiet and sad though.
Ranma found himself liking Hitomi as well. She was a practical woman, nice and hard-working, but not afraid to tell him off. She settled into martial arts lessons with a grim determination; he wondered sometimes what had happened as she made her way through the chaos of the messed up city outside. He never asked. He was a little afraid of what she might tell him.
He had offered the martial arts lessons to her after a crazy guy in filthy rags had rushed screaming into the Estate. It had been Ranma's turn to feed Usagi dinner, and he had only just heard the yells from downstairs in time to stop the madman from stabbing Hitomi with a butcher's knife. She called him a knight in shining armor. Attacks on the Estate were rare—the walls kept most creatures out and there weren't too many people around. Still, it was for the best if Hitomi could defend herself.
The first lesson did not start out all that well. He still couldn't bear to hit a girl so he tried to get her to attack him while he dodged like when he was trying to get Akane's speed up. Unlike Akane however, Hitomi didn't know how to throw a punch effectively. He'd started winding her up about it, "Stupid girl! Not like that. Aw, come on, can't you do any better? Suppose I shouldn't expect it from a weak little girl."
She'd stopped and yelled at him. "How am I supposed to learn anything like this? Stop jumping around like a demented rabbit and show me! And stop that childish name-calling! Didn't anyone ever teach you how to be polite?" She'd chewed him out, glaring at him like his mother had glared at Pops when he explained why he ate so quickly. Shame-faced, he'd slowed down and actually showed her how to hold her body and how to move her arm to give a powerful and efficient hit.
While Ranma taught her martial arts, Hitomi taught him how to teach them. The more he worked with her, the more he remembered how he had learned. Pops may have taken a swim or be eaten by sharks approach to teaching, but the masters at various dojos they stopped by had been real teachers. Even Pops, when Ranma was little, had started him off by correcting his stance and teaching him the katas bit by bit. He'd only started going through them all at once when he realized how fast Ranma could pick them up.
The "days" settled into a pattern; chores and meals, patrolling and practice, and time with Usagi. The sun was still completely wacky of course, but they made due without it. Ranma found himself returning to his habit of talking to her, telling about his day and about random memories that still ambushed him sometimes. He heard a fair amount of her life story and they started to have actual conversations. They talked about the best meals they had ever eaten, their favorite kind of ice cream, and so on. Some of their conversations were more serious, about power and duty and the responsibility of the strong to protect the weak. Ranma talked about his fiancées and Usagi shared how she sometimes got frustrated with her boyfriend's condescending attitude. The only topic they avoided was the time storms. Even so, they preferred the silly conversations to the serious.
Usagi somehow picked up on the fact that Hitomi was still teasing him about being a knight—probably because she did it during the martial arts lessons they still had in the Queen's rooms. Usagi started doing it too, rhapsodizing about how he'd look in plate armor and then nearly falling over giggling when he blushed as red as a tomato and started making warding gestures.
After some time, more people started finding the Estate. The first was a man in a torn business suit with a glazed look. Ranma welcomed him onto the Estate and showed him around, just like he had with Hitomi. That formidable woman pulled him into the Queen's room once the grateful man was settled down with a hot meal.
"You can't just go on trusting anyone who comes by, Ranma."
"What're you talking about? He's not attacking us or anything. 'Sides he's just some office worker or something. Not any threat to me. And if he does anything stupid around you, I'll take care of him."
"Not everyone bad attacks right off. We need to be careful."
"It's a martial artist's duty to protect the weak." Ranma said stubbornly.
"Well, our first duty is to protect the Queen. She's the only thing between us and that mess of Time out there. Look, Ranma, I'm not saying that we should kick him out. I want to help him—and anyone else who might come by—just as much as you do. But we have to protect ourselves and we have to protect the Queen first."
Ranma didn't agree—until the third man who came on to the Estate tried to strangle Usagi, ranting that it was all her fault the apocalypse had come. After that, Ranma watched all the newcomers very carefully. He made sure that either he or Hitomi was always with Usagi, and he made sure to really get to know everyone on the Estate. If he or Hitomi got an odd vibe off anyone, they paid close attention to that person. Any kind of violence towards the Queen got a person kicked off the Estate automatically. If a person made other sorts of problems—attacking people or refusing to work, then Ranma and Hitomi called everyone together and they all decided if that person needed to leave or just miss meals or something.
Hitomi had taken Ranma's curse in stride and Usagi had had enough time to get used to the idea before she spoke to him that she didn't even really think about it. Most people arriving on the Estate accepted it fairly easily too. It was hard to get too worked up about a boy who turned into a girl after you'd seen your entire family frozen in time, walked from a snowstorm into a punishingly hot jungle, and scrambled up a cliff to escape from a saber-tooth tiger.
Some people gained enough trust from both Ranma and Hitomi that he started training them to protect themselves and others. From the beginning, they had fitted people into the schedule of chores that they had worked out between themselves, and guard duty became one of those rotations.
There were still only a few people on the Estate, but more were arriving all the time, as if some lock somewhere had been released. They were putting a growing strain on the supplies that Ranma had stocked. Hitomi organized a work party, clearing some of the ornamental gardens for crops. Unfortunately, with the sun's course still erratic and the weather completely unstable, a garden was unreliable.
Ranma took some of his best students from the guards and sent them outside to forage. He talked to them about his own journeys and found that most people didn't feel the warning tingle he had come to associate with the storms. He sent two of those few who did with the foraging party.
"I should have gone with them." He told the Queen later. "Mako's a good guy, but he don't got enough experience to really take care of them out there. They might be able to fight off most thieves, but what if they run into a group of samurai or something? I should've gone out ta get stuff myself. I'd do a hell of a lot better than them." He left unsaid that he had stayed only to protect her.
The foraging team came back, in spite of Ranma's worries, with only minor injuries. They brought back a cart of food, an irascible nanny goat, and a grand tale of adventure and danger. They were the heroes of the Estate. Ranma knew they would need more trips for food—two more people had showed up while the team was out. He added another training session for those people interested in being on a foraging team and taught them how to run as well as how to fight and how to find edible food in the forest. He pulled in a farmer to talk to them about how to know what crops were worth harvesting. Hitomi set up a group to do inventory and started a list of other things the Estate needed.
As Ranma got more and more busy, Hitomi took charge of putting together the lists of rotations for duty. If anyone was unhappy about their share of work, she sent them to talk to Ranma. Anyone who refused to do their share was invited to leave the Estate. Few took the offer. Hitomi took Ranma off most of the chore lists. He was spending more and more time teaching the guards and foragers how to fight. He was also taking turns patrolling the wall of the Estate and checking up on all the people on the Estate, watching for danger from within and without.
People started bringing arguments to Ranma to be settled. It wasn't that he was particularly good at it, just that if he made a decision people were less likely to argue. It was a crash course in solving problems for Ranma. He started talking to people even more, getting a head start on any problems that might show up and getting people's opinions on how they should be handled. He went over every decision he made with Hitomi and Usagi when she was up, trying to figure out how to handle it things better. He started listening to the complaints and arguments in the Queen's room after he found that the combination of his growing authority and her magical presence made people even less likely to argue with him.
Ranma found himself the leader of the Estate. It was not a role he'd ever imagined for himself. He'd never been able to solve his own problems very well. But people listened to him and he found that he wanted to make sure he was worth listening to, so he listened to them as well. People trusted him and he started working to be worthy of that.
One day, he overheard a woman in the kitchens talking to a girl who had just been picked up by a foraging party. "There's the Queen, right. She protects us and is as kind and beautiful as an angel. The gods gave her special powers to keep us safe. Her Knight is the most powerful man in the world and he takes care of her. He takes care of us too, because it's her wish."
Hitomi's teasing comments about his knight-in-shining-armor tendencies had become mythology. He had never paid much attention to people calling him Sir or being respectful, as busy as he was trying to keep with their expectations. Now though, he found that he was called the Queen's Knight by almost everyone on the Estate. She was a goddess of mercy and he was her voice. She was their mystic savior and he was her champion.
It made him uncomfortable.
"It's what they need Ranma. The world's gone mad and most of them have seen too much of it. They need something to believe in and you're here. Stop whining about being a hero and go do what you're supposed to be doing." Hitomi scolded him when he went to her, confused by people liking and respecting him.
He had too much to do to spend much time worrying about it. They had enough people to send out two foraging parties in rotations—one leaving a few days after the other came back. He spent a lot of time helping them train before they left and hearing reports on what they saw and did when they came back. The outside world was still pretty weird, but as they spent more time exploring they found that shrines tended to be safer than anything else. Each foraging party had at least one person who could sense Time Storms coming; Mako's party managed to hide from one Storm in an old shrine a few miles from the Estate. They had to fight off a pack of bandits from the Warring States period, but the buildings didn't collapse or disappear around them and no one was frozen in Time.
Ranma told everyone in the foraging parties to keep an eye for any shrines and to keep them in mind as safe ground. After talking with Hitomi, he told them to keep some supplies at some of the closer shrines too and to make sure to stop by them periodically.
When less people started showing up randomly at the Estate, Ranma wondered if it was because they had started to run out of people who had survived the Time Storms. It was depressing but he kind of felt relieved. More people put more of a strain on their supplies and more of a strain on him to keep track of everyone and help the Estate run smoothly. Then the foraging parties started bringing people back with them.
Ghosts that were as real as the monk Ranma had met were rare and all of them disappeared before anyone they were with got to the Estate. They freaked the foragers out the first few times they ran into them—having someone you were just talking to disappear was enough to disturb even people who trained on how to escape from velociraptors. Some of the people the foragers picked up though, weren't ghosts. They also weren't Walkers, people who had been wandering around since the first Time Storm hit. Instead, they found that some of the people who had been frozen in time were being freed. Not too many, but enough here and there.
Ranma started spending more time patrolling the walls. He would stop every once in a while and stare out into the city. It worried the regular guards on the walls. They approached Hitomi about it and she brought it to the Queen's attention. The atmosphere on the Estate got more and more tense as Ranma started to be more and more distracted. People started treating the newcomers with more suspicion and hostility. Maybe one of them had done something to affect their Knight. Next thing you know, the Queen would start to drop the ball and they'd all be overwhelmed by the Time.
Hitomi had started having conversations with the Queen as well. Mostly, she spoke to her as a representative of the people of the Estate talking to their Goddess, but she was enough of a no-nonsense personality that she also treated the Queen as she did Ranma—someone to respect and work with, but not actually a mystical force. She reported to the Queen as the number of fights between citizens of the Estate rose, as people started to shirk their chores more, and as Ranma became less and less involved with the running of the Estate.
Together, they decided to confront him.
"We're worried about you, Ranma. Everyone is." Usagi pleaded.
"They're scared shitless. Look, I told you before, you and Her Majesty here are people's shining hopes. If you fall apart, everything we're working for here falls apart too. Maybe it shouldn't be that way, but it is." Hitomi had a very direct approach to life.
Ranma reacted defensively. He'd trained the guards and foraging parties in the Saotome Style of Anything Goes Martial Arts—the best of the best. Sure, no of them were his level, but they were good enough to protect the Estate. He wasn't really neglecting his duties anyways. Just yesterday—or was it the day before? Okay, fine a couple of days ago—he'd helped Mariko solve that mystery of where the dried meat was disappearing too, hadn't he? And now they had some dogs to help watch the gate. Hitomi kept arguing about Ranma's responsibilities, Ranma kept arguing that he wasn't neglecting them. Finally, Usagi intervened.
Usagi looked like she was about to burst into tears. "I thought I was your f-friend!"
"A'course you are Usagi-chan! I never said you ain't." Ranma panicked at the idea of her crying. He never knew what to do with crying girls.
"But friends tell each other everything! And you w-won't tell us what's w-wrong!" She wailed, her voice nearly high enough to crack glass.
"Aw, c'mon. It ain't like that. I am your friend really. I'm just worried, y'know." Ranma was desperate, hovering over Usagi awkwardly.
"About what?" Sniffed Usagi.
"Well…it's just…I mean…" Ranma mumbled uncomfortably. "The way some people are starting to wake up and all."
Usagi looked confused. Hitomi, on the other hand, had a look of dawning awareness. A number of people had come to her concerned about loved ones who might now be waking up, alone and vulnerable in a messed up world. She really should of realized what was going on, but for all that she was closer to Ranma than anyone other than the Queen, she still sometimes fell into the trap of thinking of him as a superhuman protector.
"You're worried about your family? Oh, Ranma." Hitomi sighed, upset at her own blindness.
Usagi looked startled. She knew how much Ranma missed his friends but it hadn't even occurred to her that they might be coming out of their frozen state. She thought of the wistfulness in his voice when he'd told her how cute Akane was when she smiled or how much fun it was to hang out with Ryouga. She thought about stealing manga from Rei and eating Makoto's cooking. She thought about how nice it would be to have someone like Ami or Nabiki advising her and Ranma on how to deal with the people of the Estate. "You're just being silly Ranma!" She interrupted Hitomi's attempt to sooth him by telling him how unlikely it was anyone he knew had woken up. "Of course you'll just have to go check on them."
Of course, it wasn't as easy as all that. Ranma didn't like the idea of leaving Usagi and the Estate unprotected. She pointed out that he had trained the guards himself and he had to trust them to do their job. Hitomi was worried that people on the Estate would be upset and cause problems. They depended on Ranma's strength and believed in his confidence in his abilities. Even if they didn't really need him, it was better that they thought they did. It made them feel better and it kept even the ambitious people from trying to take over leadership of the Estate. They couldn't afford to have a split over who was in charge. Usagi's mythic position in the minds of the Estate was similar to the Emperor and Ranma her Shogun; 40 some people might not make for much of a civil war, but they could sure tear themselves apart. And what about jealousy? Everyone was worried about their own loved ones. Why should Ranma get to check on his?
It took a lot of talking and negotiating to come up with a way it might work. Usagi had to return to maintaining the crystal long before they were done. She was adamant that Ranma should go. In her insistence, she tapped in the persona of Princess Serenity and even Hitomi found herself giving way to the grace and wisdom of that radiant person.
The next time Usagi was momentarily from the demands of the crystal, the Queen addressed her people for the first time. The woman who was born to be Queen of Crystal Tokyo spoke. She stood at her window, benevolent and magical, and spoke to them of a mission for Her Knight. It was time for him to venture out into Chaos and search out others who needed his protection. He would return triumphant, she was sure. In the meantime, she trusted the people of the Estate to protect her and each other in his place.
Hitomi organized a committee of people to make a map of everyone's journeys to the Estate. Anyone could apply to have Ranma check on their family. Everyone did. Most people, it turned out, came from within a thirty mile radius of the Estate. Ranma had come the farthest, which Hitomi supposed was not surprising. It added to his legend, that he had survived such a long journey in the Chaos of the Time Storms.
When Ranma finally set out, a few weeks later, he left with a map showing the locations of everyone he was supposed to check on as well as any shrines nearby that he could use for shelter. The people of the Estate had tried to send a cartload of supplies—as well as an escort of foragers and guards—but he left alone with only an old backpack full of food and one blanket.
Leaving the Estate, Ranma felt a great weight fall off his shoulders. Hiking through snowy streets and meadows full of brightly blooming flowers, he wasn't the Queen's Knight. He didn't dare leap up to the rooftops—no roof could be trusted not to collapse underneath him, but even on the ground he traveled faster than most could manage. He was free of the weight of his people's respect for him. There were no arguments to solve, no punishments to hand out to slackers and troublemakers, no awe-filled eyes expecting him to protect them from every danger. He was just Saotome Ranma, wandering martial artist.
He slept when he was tired, in a shrine when he was near one, or out in the forest when he wasn't. The homes nearest to the Estate would be checked out by one of the foraging parties. The foragers usually went a few days travel out—four or five at the most, but they would stretch it a little looking for so-called "Sleepers" waking up out of their frozen-in-time state. Of course, Ranma traveled much faster than those groups could. Still, he had nearly a week of time to himself before he had to start really looking for people.
He saw a few ghosts, too distant in time to even realize he was there. He fought off an enraged samurai and a band of wild dogs that was living in one of the shrines. He slept under the stars, got drenched in a summer rain storm, and watched a herd of mammoths trying to negotiate the narrow streets of a section of town stuck in the middle of wide grasslands.
He found a very confused office worker at his third stop, the husband to one of the best cooks on the Estate. Ranma explained what he could to the man and then took him to a shrine. Grateful to have someone telling him what to do and eager to reunite with his wife, the man agreed to stay at the shrine until Ranma could return and lead him back to the Estate. Ranma picked up a small boy and his grandmother nearby and dropped them off at the same shrine. As he slowly made his way into Nerima, Ranma found another six people and brought them to various safe shrines to wait for him. Two people refused and he gave them copies of his map so they could try to find their own way to the Estate. One man, angry and belligerent, ran away and was eaten by a dinosaur before Ranma could save him.
Walking through half-familiar streets, Ranma felt his sense of relaxation and freedom slipping away. He had been confident ordering the people he found around and taking care of their safety. He had felt comfortable taking charge, seeing them relax in the presence of someone who knew what he was doing. Nerima took all of that away, reminding him of the boy who hadn't been able to take charge of his own life, let alone anyone else's.
Tense and hopeful, frightened and lost and eager and angry and happy to be home, Ranma started the patrol he had run so many times right after the Time Storms first hit. Furinkan high school was still a swamp of slow time. Tofu's office had disappeared entirely into a block of old-fashioned courtyard houses. Ucchan's was barely recognizable as a building, a gleaming black monolith that belonged to a science fiction movie. The Nekohanten was still overrun by a wilderness that had started taking over all the nearby buildings as well. The Kuno's estate had crumbled further, a devastated ruin inhabited only by the statues of the Kunos and Sasuke.
He approached the Tendo Dojo warily, overcome with memories of the first time he had come here. He had been female then too, carrying a worn backpack, nervous and upset. Of course, this time he was approaching under his own steam instead of thrown over the shoulder of an overgrown panda.
The gate was closed and locked and there was a hole in the outer wall. He could see that the yard was overgrown and the dojo fallen in. Clenching his fists rhythmically, he approached the house. Coming up to the living room, his knees gave out from under him. Everything was exactly the way he had left it. Akane was still swathed in a frozen battle aura, her hand reaching for her mallet. Even the food was still giving off steam, piping hot from the Kasumi's kitchen.
It took him a while, filled with grief and memories, to realize that Kasumi was missing. He tore through the house, frantically searching for the kindest woman he had ever met. He finally found her sleeping in her room. She was huddled onto her bed, her dress streaked with dirt, her hair tangled and matted, and tear tracks barely drying on her face.
He paused in the doorway—he was never any good with crying girls, and this was Kasumi, the sweetest, gentlest person on the planet. He'd rather kill himself than see her so upset. But this was Kasumi, the sweetest, gentlest person on the planet and she needed his help. She had made her family her life and then she had woken up alone in a mad world.
He sat down on her bed and gathered her into his arms. She woke up with a scream, her hands curled into flailing claws and he thought for a moment that he'd made the wrong choice. Then she saw his face and latched on to him like a barnacle clutching onto a rock in a storm-swept ocean. She buried her head in his chest, soaking his shirt with renewed tears. Her arms clung to her with a surprising, desperate strength, nearly crushing him almost as much as one of Ryouga's hugs. He choked, then relaxed and hugged her back. He rubbed circles on her back, murmuring soothing words into her hair. It's alright, I'm here, nothing will hurt you, you're safe, you're not alone, it's alright.
She couldn't bear to let him out of her sight. He helped her pack, shoving everything she couldn't bear to leave into a bag. The only place she refused to follow him was into the living room, where her family sat frozen around a table ready to eat the last meal she had prepared. She barely spoke at all and when she did her voice was hoarse and broken. He packed everything as fast as he could, eager to get both of them away from the haunting presence and loss of those they cared about.
As he led her out of the house, he thought about all of the people he had seen still frozen on his journey. A few Sleepers had woken up—but they were so very few among so many left behind. The Time Storms were still happening, hitting randomly and changing the landscape in dangerous and unpredictable ways. He had described the Estate to Kasumi and to everyone else he rescued as a haven of sanity and safety. They were what was left of the human race. They needed him, to be their hope, their protector and leader, to be the Queen's Knight.
As he left, a terrified and grief-stricken Kasumi clinging to his arm, he said goodbye to Nerima, to the people he had known and cared about, and to the Ranma who lived there with them, concerned only about fixing his curse and avoiding as many weddings as possible.