I don't own Ranma or TWEWY. In fact, I don't even own this fanfic. It's actually just my attempt at forming words out of the keyboard smashes made by my angry eleven year old brother. Amazing how coherent it is, huh? This should account for any lackings of the story. Don't blame me, blame him! I think it's pretty good for random key smashes! Would you really pick on the accidental writing of an eleven year old?
You would? Oh. Well then, enjoy the fic, jackass.
nNnNn
Ranma couldn't move. He couldn't speak. He was having trouble even thinking given what he was looking at. This just wasn't possible. It had to be their relatives or something... Shampoo's mom! Yeah, that was it, this was probably Shampoo's mom... and Mousse's dad. Or something like that. Who were in Japan, running a noodle shop? Wait, that didn't make any sense.
"Do you need some time to think over your order, sir?" the purple haired woman asked innocently.
Well, it certainly SOUNDED like Shampoo. Her voice was a dead ringer for the amorous Amazon, even if her Japanese was far better.
"Sir? Sir?" the woman repeated.
"Dah... uh... that is, I..." Ranma's thought process tripped over itself as it struggled to figure out what to ask the woman. He couldn't just come out and ask her, could he? Best to sort of lead into the question of her identity in case he was horribly mistaken, as he was really hoping. "Er, sorry, it's just... you look really familiar, and so does the man back there..."
"Oh?" the woman looked somewhat surprised. "That's funny, I was just thinking the same thing about you..."
Ranma's heart skipped a beat. If this really was Shampoo, she didn't fully remember him...
"C-could you call the man in the back over, please? See if he recognizes me?"
"Ah..." The restaurant owner wasn't quite sure what to say to this, but saw no reason not to acquiesce. "Certainly, sir. Husband! Could you come over here please? Someone is asking for you!" she called to the black haired man. Ranma managed to contain his initial reaction to the "husband" part, resolving to think about it later.
"Coming!" The man in question walked from the back to the counter. Same coke bottle glasses, same facial structure, same hair... yeah, that was almost certainly Mousse. Shit. But there was still hope, he hadn't actually asked their names yet, and neither of them were wearing nametags. It could still be that this wasn't in fact a scenario straight out of a dream, and Ranma was just facing two incredible likenesses.
"Mo- um, sir... do you know who I am?"
The bespectacled man adjusted his glasses and peered at Ranma. "Well, you look a little like someone I used to know I guess, but I don't think so. Do you know me and I've simply forgotten you?"
Even his voice was the same, though a bit deeper due to his age. The doubt Ranma had been clinging too was nearly gone, there were just too many similarities to pretend it wasn't them any longer. Somehow he doubted Shampoo and Mousse both just happened to have nigh-identical thirty-something year old twins, who also happened to run a ramen joint, whom they had just never gotten around to mentioning.
The married couple was getting worried now. The boy in front of them was acting very oddly, and his expression was beginning to show panic. Before the man could ask the boy what was wrong or why he needed to talk to him, Ranma spoke again.
"Screw this." Ranma said aloud. He had to confirm it. Even if he was almost certain, he couldn't just make that assumption and turn out to have been wrong later. Subtlety be damned, it was time to be blunt. "Is... is that you, Shampoo?"
The woman looked taken aback. "Why, yes, that's my name... though I know its odd, so I usually go by Shan... how do you know my full name? Do I know you?"
"And Mousse, that's you, right? Please say no..."
The man pushed his glasses back up on his nose, rather wary of the boy at this point. Not many people knew of their "traditional" Amazon names; there was no reason this random teenager should... unless he wasn't just any random kid. "Yes... though like my wife, I go by an abbreviation. Call me Tsu."
Well, that settled it then.
It really was them.
Shampoo and Mousse, twenty years older than they should be. Running a ramen shop. In Shibuya.
...
Ranma abruptly smashed a fist down on the order counter. "Shampoo, where's Cologne?! She's got all that Amazon magic junk, surely she's got something to cure whatever this is!" he yelled.
Shampoo backed away slightly before frowning, shocked at the suddenness of Ranma's outburst, but quick to regain her composure. "Sir... please do not damage the property. I'm sure we can help if you just explain what the problem is. Just what are you referring too? Cure what? Why do you need cologne, and..." She trailed off, suddenly much more wary of the boy in front of her. "... just what did you mean about Amazons and magic?" This boy couldn't possibly know about that... in fact, how did he know her real name...?
Ranma's already open jaw locked in place at those words. This was too much to handle. On top of being way older than normal, Shampoo didn't even see anything wrong with the current situation. She acted as if she wasn't in Nerima less than a week ago, about half her current age and chasing him down on a weekly basis. Not to mention she didn't even seem to know who Cologne was. Considering how Mousse hadn't said any different, and was instead just looking at him slightly oddly, he didn't know what the pigtailed martial artist was talking about either.
This wasn't possible! What, had they been aged AND their memories had been erased or altered?! Why were they even IN Shibuya?! Where the hell was Cologne at and why hadn't she fixed this yet?! They'd gotten MARRIED?! Questions spun in the martial artist's head before he was snapped out of it by a sudden question from Mousse.
"Sir, before you ask us anything more or attempt to smash our counter again, it's MY turn to ask a question." Mousse's voice was hard and sharp now, though Ranma had no idea why. "How could you possibly know our full names? Even our closest friends and associates do not know us by those, nor have we ever told them. So I ask you..." he paused for a moment and took off his glasses, revealing a startlingly menacing glare leveled at Ranma. "...why do you know them?"
Of all the questions Mousse could have asked, that was not one Ranma had expected. To him, it seemed obvious. But then, apparently Shampoo and Mousse had forgotten about Nerima and everything that happened in it entirely. But they said he looked familiar...
"Don't pretend you didn't hear me, boy. Answer me." Mousse was still leveling that glare at him, and Shampoo had joined in. Man was it weird to hear Mousse referring to him as "boy"...
"I know them because you two told me." Before the two could ask for any clarification, Ranma continued, hoping that maybe if he reminded them who he was they might snap out of it. It worked on Akane, after all...
"Shampoo, Mousse, don't you recognize me?! I'm Ranma! The guy you've been chasing after for the past year or so?! You," he gestured to 'Shan', "because you were trying to marry me, and you," he gestured to 'Tsu', "because you never got it through your thick head that I didn't really WANT to marry her! Remember?"
Ranma knew he'd made some sort of critical mistake when the glaring suddenly intensified. Mousse was the first to speak. "How ridiculous. Shan has been my wife for over fifteen years, she has most certainly not spent that time chasing after you. That story makes absolutely no sense."
Shampoo nodded in agreement. "He's right. Neither of us know you, and even if we did there's almost no way we would have told you our full names. Now explain how you really know them, or-"
Suddenly, Shampoo paused, mid tirade. "Wait..." She put a finger to her lips, apparently thinking about something. "D-did you say your name was... Ranma?"
Ranma quickly stopped cringing (oddly more because of Mousse than Shampoo for once) as a grin spread across his face. Had his name been enough? "Yep, that's me, Ranma Saotome. Remember me now?"
Shampoo and Mousse looked stricken. "R-ranma Saotome? That's impossible!" Mousse sputtered out. "Ranma died years ago, and he was in his twenties! You can't be him!"
"R-ranma?" Shampoo whispered, more to herself than anyone else.
"Wait, what? No, I died yesterday, and I ain't ever been older than I am now! What do yo-" Suddenly there was a kitchen knife pointed at his face. Looked like Amazon or not, Mousse still knew how to use Hidden Weapons. How...?
"Get. Out." Mousse said from behind gritted teeth. "I don't know who, or what you really are, but you will leave immediately. Whatever sort of trick this is, it will not work on us."
Ranma slumped. This was some seriously powerful memory alteration. He could keep trying, but that would probably lead to a fight, and he was already on a time limit for a different problem altogether...
"Damn it..." Gritting his teeth, Ranma slowly turned and walked away, vowing to come back and fix whatever this was as soon as he was alive again.
hHhHh
As he walked out the door, Shampoo turned to her husband. "Tsu... if that really was Ranma..."
"It wasn't." Mousse replied stiffly. "Even in our history, there has never been a recorded case of someone coming back to life. But there has to be a reason someone would try to make us believe Ranma was back. Let's talk about this after closing."
And so that was that. Mousse returned to the back and Shampoo returned to cooking. But even so, the question lingered in their minds- if that boy hadn't been Ranma, just who was he?
iIiIi
Uzuki was quickly losing her patience with her flame haired partner, who was seemingly waiting for the Second Coming to finish his last bite of noodles. She couldn't speed up the underachieving slacker of a reaper she'd made a pact with and she knew it, but that didn't mean she didn't get frustrated with his tendencies to do things as sloooooowly as possible. In fact, that happened more often than not, especially when she had to buy.
Bored out of her mind and tired of pointlessly asking him to hurry, she glanced over at the commotion occurring at the counter. She didn't get to hear much of the conversation before the a knife suddenly shot out of the long haired man's sleeve, and some harsh words were exchanged. Shortly after, the boy walked out of the restaurant, a grim expression on his face. Uzuki watched enraptured. Not that she really cared about civilian altercations, but usually the ones she witnessed didn't involve actual weaponry, nor did they often take place in restaurants. Plus there was nothing else going on at the moment really, unless one got a thrill out of watching food go cold. As the tip of the teen's pigtail slipped outside, something clicked in Uzuki's brain.
The pink haired reaper poked her partner, who was slowly slurping up the noodles hanging off the edge of his chopsticks. God, the bean paste was almost better, at least he could walk around with that. "...hey Kariya, wasn't that guy dressed like the girl that reaper was talking up yesterday?"
One of the nondescript hoodie Harriers had come in at the end of the day and started loudly talking with the rest of the faceless masses about some red haired girl with a pigtail in red and black Chinese clothes, betting on how long she would last or if she might actually win. Apparently she was going through the game without psychs or even a partner somehow, so she was given pretty low odds at surviving, but the original guy had seemed pretty smug by the time he was done making bets.
Kariya finally finished up the last of his noodles and responded. "I guess... what about it? Maybe they changed clothes or something, or they just bought the same clothes from somewhere. You know fashion around here is about as fickle as it gets." he drawled, savoring the last of the taste. "Besides, that was pretty obviously a guy. Does it really matter? We've already hit our quota for the week..."
The pink haired reaper scowled. She would motivate this bum if it took her the rest of her time as a Harrier Reaper, which she probably wouldn't still BE if she had been able to figure out how to do so. "It's not about the "quota" you came up with so you could do the absolute minimum amount of work while still staying alive Kariya, it's about taking down powerful players and looking good so we can get promoted! Come on, you don't find it even a little interesting? This week's jerk of a Game Master mentioned the same girl for the little time she was even around."
Uzuki was still bitter about that. She had doubted she would get picked for this week's Game Master, but she had hoped her performance during the previous week was good enough that she might at least have a shot. But then this albino girl whose eyes indicated she probably either was on or had been on way too many drugs had shown up and arbitrarily been picked instead. Maybe it wouldn't have stung so much if Uzuki had any idea where this girl had come from, but she seemed to have shown up out of nowhere. She certainly hadn't been part of the Harriers, and from what Uzuki could remember, she hadn't even been a prior player- at least, not from around here. And the girl was horrible not just in personality, but at the job, too- you were supposed to at least let the players have SOME sort of chance, or at the very least let them think that so you could crush their hope all the better later on. But no, she'd just let loose half the harrier and barrier reapers and told them to do what they wanted, wiping out most of the players on the first day. What the Composer had been thinking when making HER Game Master Uzuki still couldn't puzzle out. But she could at least make herself look good for a chance next week...
"Come on, that guy reminded me. If nothing else I'd say the girl is at least worth looking around for to see if there's something interesting going on this week." And to wipe her and any other players they came across out, of course, but saying that wasn't going to get her partner out of his seat.
Kariya sighed. "Alright, alright, we can look around for mystery girl..." To Uzuki's surprise, he got up and started walking away. Could it be he was actually listening to her and leaving, with that little prompti-
"...a little later. Hey, miss, can I get another bowl of the Miso Ramen?" Kariya finished as he strolled up to the counter.
The pink haired reaper gave a cry of anguish and slumped in her seat. They were never going to get out of here...
sSsSs
Being outside did not put Ranma's mind at ease whatsoever. His hunger was gone, overtaken by the turmoil in his mind. As if this game weren't enough, somehow Shampoo and Mousse were... changed, and he had no idea how or why. He couldn't even really focus on them until this game was over, there wasn't enough time... not that he was making much progress without a cell phone or any other players around. He glanced at his palm. Two hours and ten minutes remaining... he needed to find someone with the mission parameters.
And yet, as he walked, looking for anyone walking through other people, or perhaps battling tattoo animals in the street, his mind continued to drift back to the Shampoo and Mousse mystery. How could that possibly have happened? Ranma supposed he could just leave things as they were even after he came back to life, it would be nice to not need to deal with the Amazons alongside everything else. Then again, he had gotten most of his best techniques from them, and even as much of a hassle to deal with as they were, they weren't really bad people per say. Screwed up, but not really bad. Could he really, in good conscience, leave them minus twenty years of their life, running a small ramen shop in a foreign city, with their memories altered past recognition?
No, no, he couldn't. Curse his stupidly forgiving nature. So many questions... how had Mousse still known Hidden Weapons if he didn't remember being an Amazon anymore? And where had Cologne been? Did whatever had done this just gotten rid of her because her knowledge from being an Amazon was the only thing keeping her alive? Ranma really couldn't imagine Cologne going down without one hell of a fight. Surely someone would have noticed any battle fought on Cologne's scale, especially since everyone else probably had noted his own disappearance by now. Nerima was probably in an uproar with both him and the Amazons disappearing... meaning Akane and Ukyo probably thought he had run off with Shampoo. Crap.
Then again, he didn't even know if this had just affected the Amazons! What if the same sort of memory-aging thing had happened to everyone else in Nerima?! Ranma shivered. No, no, that was unlikely, unless it was magic on an absolutely huge scale. He needed to calm down and think about this.
Okay, time to split the problem up. Instead of focusing on the aging, what could have made them forget him? Xi Fang Gao technique, maybe? That would have explained their lingering sense of familiarity, but Ranma didn't think it seemed likely. For one, it was an Amazon technique to begin with, so they would probably have known how to counter and evade it. Even if they had been surprised, Ranma was pretty sure the shampoo had never been able to alter memories, just erase them, so while they were correct in thinking he was dead, there was no reason they should think he was older when it happened.
Maybe they really WERE doppelgangers? Perfect ones, like Copycat Ken? Maybe one of them even WAS him! It would explain both the lack of memory AND the aging... but why would anyone do that? What was the point? Whoever did it wouldn't POSSIBLY have been able to know he'd be here, not to mention that even if it was supposed to be a trick, it didn't accomplish anything besides confusing him!
Okay, he wasn't making any headway trying to figure out the memory loss. So, time to switch focuses again, this time with more thought to the cause instead of the results.
Ranma sifted through his memory for anything he could think of that would speed up a person's aging. He thought he'd heard a rumor in passing at some point a few years back about age changing foods, but aside from that he couldn't recall anything that could double someone's age in a day or two. No matter how hard he thought, he couldn't think of anything that could do something like that, magic stuff included.
"Ergh, this is hopeless!" There was no reason whatever had aged them had to be something he knew about! How much magic stuff he'd encountered had he actually heard of before it showed up in person?! He didn't have a clue what could have made the two of them age so much in less than two day-
Ranma paused. "Wait a second..."
While racking his brain for magic items he'd encountered, Ranma had remembered the Nanban Mirror. While that didn't actually age someone, it brought a different idea to mind- instead of them aging, had Ranma maybe gone forward through time? The martial artist briefly mused on the fact that he was one of a rare few that couldn't actually rule out time travel as a possible explanation for a situation. Was it possible in this case though? It sure didn't seem likely. Going forwards would have been a first, and Ranma didn't even know how he would have gotten here this ti-
"Those PHONES!" the martial artist suddenly exclaimed aloud. That mystery was finally clearing up. If the miniature looking cell phone things were actually just futuristic ones, it would make sense that they looked different and could display words, and were actually portable, the way cell phones were supposed to be in the first place. Even if Ranma had no idea how he would have gotten to the future, the possibility was looking more and more likely.
But... if this was the future, then-!
"Er... hey, you wouldn't happen to be a player, would you?"
Ranma spun around. Shin and Juu stood before him, apparently having seen the people walking through him while he stood and contemplated. After all that time Ranma had spent looking for them, they had found him instead.
Unfortunately, this was possibly the worst time they could have chosen to show up.
"WHAT YEAR IS IT?!" Ranma babbled out in a panic.
Shin and Juu immediately backed up from the obviously unstable pigtailed teen. "I-it's... uh... u-um..." Juu panicked and hid herself behind Shin.
"I SAID WHAT YEAR IS IT?! PLEASE!" Ranma yelled, nearly tripping over the words.
Shin quickly stammered out an answer, which was not the one Ranma was hoping to hear.
"W-what?!" That was almost twenty years past what he last remembered! Damnit, this really was the future wasn't it?!
"Y-... you gotta be kiddin' me... no, you REALLY GOTTA BE KIDDIN' ME..."
Now Ranma was getting pissed all over again. Just when he'd FINALLY been starting to get a handle on things yet another major problem had been thrown on top. Even DEATH didn't afford him a respite! It was just like Nerima, especially the part about having no clue how to solve any of it!
Trembling with Hibiki-like fury, Ranma shook with rage that simply could not be contained. And indeed it did not stay that way.
"I AM SO SICK OF THIS!" he screamed, not that anyone sans the two shocked players in front of him visibly heard him. "GIVE ME A BREAK ALREADY! AS IF THIS PROBABLY RIGGED GAME WASN'T ENOUGH! NOW YOU'RE THROWING TIME TRAVEL IN?! DAMN IT KAMI WHAT DID I EVER DO TO YOU?! GO PICK ON RYOGA SO HE CAN AT LEAST HAVE SOME SORT OF EXCUSE NEXT TIME HE COMPLAINS THAT SOMETHING WAS MY FAULT! OR KUNO! YEAH, EITHER ONE OF EM'! SHOW SWORD BOY THAT HE'S SPEAKIN' TRUTH WHEN HE TALKS ABOUT THE 'VENGEANCE OF HEAVEN' LIKE IT'S ACTUALLY GONNA HAPPEN! HELL, GO AFTER ANY OF THAT FAMILY FOR ALL I CARE! BUT STOP! SCREWING! ME! OVER!"
His piece said, Ranma simply stood there with his chin raised towards the sky and his mouth slightly open, an indescribable look on his face. He had to admit, that felt good. He never really got the chance to release his anger at anything without fear of reprisal, there was always an argument and likely a fight waiting for him if he dared be upset about any of the weirdness and idiocy his life threw at him. But none of the people who would do that were around to hear him, so it was okay to explode for once, right?
Upset or not, Ranma was never really one to angst over what life threw at him, being more pragmatic than that. So, quickly cycling past the first two stages of Martial Arts Problem Solving (1. 'Question Pops to see if its his fault' and 2. 'Try to ignore the problem in hopes it'll go away on its own'), Ranma moved through the third (3. 'Start thinking clearly about the problem once you've gotten out your initial anger or annoyance (assuming you could).') the fourth (4. 'Accept the probably stupid problem even if it really ISN'T your fault.') and the fifth (5. 'Fix the problem by any means necessary, because as stage 2 proved it ain't gonna fix itself.') in quick succession, possibly faster than he ever had before. Most likely because there was no one around to distract his thought process or attack him while he was working through these.
Anger temporarily spent by cathartic sky screaming, Ranma settled on dealing with the "dead" problem before trying to fix the time travel one. He could deal with time stupidity (and it almost certainly was stupidity going by his track record) later, when an actual solution, or at least more information, presented itself. There was no point in fixating on it right now. Right now, what he needed was to get the mission parameters from Shin and Juu, or he wouldn't even be around to deal with it anyways.
His mind made up, Ranma turned towards the pair to-
Oh, great. There they were in the distant crowd, running away, apparently freaked out from his raging at the heavens.
"No. Screw this. I am NOT dealing with any more problems than I absolutely HAVE to today."
hHhHh
"Shin, come on! Hurry!"
The green haired boy panted, obviously worn out even from the brief bit of running. "Sorry... *pant* I may be skinny- *pant* but I've never been in the best of shape..." If only they hadn't had to run. They were going to ask that guy if they'd seen a red haired girl with a pigtail, but that hadn't exactly panned out. While he had obviously been a player, he was equally obviously... unbalanced somehow, and Shin wanted to be nowhere near him if at all possible.
Groaning, Shin pulled himself to his feet, only to yelp and flinch back when he saw the black haired boy glowering at him from above. Juu was a few feet behind him, looking as if she wanted to do something but had no idea what.
The pigtailed teen got straight to the point. "Guys, stop being scared. It's me, Ranma. Ignore my outburst there for a sec. What's the mission?"
"...Wha?" Juu mumbled.
"...what she said." Shin responded. Ranma? Huh? He did sort of look like her, and they even were dressed the same way, but this was... obviously not Ranma. Unless he or she was one amazing crossdresser or crossplayer, in which case, wow.
Ranma rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah, ancient Chinese curse, very tragic tale, switch genders with cold and hot water, tell ya' about it later. I can't show ya' right now, so just trust me, I'm Ranma. And I don't got a cell phone so I don't got the mission. I've been lookin' for you two, or any other dead person, so I can figure out what it is and finish it, so, please? I'd like to have time leftover to eat since I managed to miss my chance a few minutes ago."
"Wait, wait, wait. Wait." Shin waved his hands back and forth in a placating manner. Internally he was wondering just who didn't have a cell phone in this day and age, but maybe it just hadn't been on him when he died. "Okay, I believe you're a player, since you can see us and all, and I'll give you the mission, but unless you really are Ranma there's no way you can finish it. I'm pretty sure the Game Master was told by that reaper blocking the way to 104 what Ranma could do, since it obviously was made with her in mind."
"Look, I AM Ranma." Ranma stated succinctly. "I'll prove it to ya'. No partner, see? Same clothes, same hair except the color, and yesterday I met you when you were bein' attacked by frog noise and saved ya' without any 'psyches'. That enough proof for ya'?"
"Er..." Shin wasn't sure how to react to that. It seemed like plenty of proof that this was Ranma, but, a gender changing curse? Really?
Well, they were in a game whose eventual goal was coming back to life from after death, so maybe he didn't have the right to be skeptical about curses. Still, he couldn't help having some doubt...
"I... suppose that's enough..." Shin said, a bit unsure about saying such. It didn't seem right. What if this was some sort of trick by the reapers? They'd already shown themselves to be running the game unfairly if this was the mission they gave. So what if this "Ranma" was just...
The pigtailed boy groaned, a bit exasperated. "Look, I JUST, and I do mean just, like, less than half an hour ago just, changed back to normal. I'd really appreciate if you guys would just trust me on this, it was kind of a minor ordeal to get the water in the first place."
While Shin shifted uncomfortably on his feet, Juu surprisingly spoke up. "Um... the, mission is to destroy five teams of Noise, w-without using any psyches." Juu told Ranma with a bit more confidence than usual. They could use all the help they could get, and even if Shin wasn't sure, Juu was fairly certain this really was Ranma.
Ranma grinned, his determination renewed. Finally, he had the elusive mission. "Thanks, Juu. Guess that explains why you guys couldn't do it." He checked his hand. Still two hours left. He could do that easy, and pick up some food as soon as he was finished. "That shouldn't be much of a problem, the only psyche I found was worthless in a fight anyways."
Juu surprised Shin by following up on that train of thought. "Y-you found a psyche? Wha... what does it do?"
Ranma's grin turned into more of a sardonic smile at that. "Well, it turned everything around me blue, and I could read everyone's minds if I concentrated. There were these weird symbol things that turned out to be noise above me, and it basically stopped ti-" Ranma stopped mid sentence.
Time.
The pin had slowed down time.
He was stuck in the future by unknown means.
He'd been using that pin... a pin that had done all but frozen time... and in Ranma's experience, things that seemed to good to be true often WERE...
Shin and Juu glanced at each other, each thinking the same thing. That couldn't be right... "Uh, Ranma...?" "That doesn't sound like..."
Ranma didn't hear them. Fishing it out of his pocket, Ranma glared as hard as he could at the black insignia pin without actually activating it. Whatever had happened to Shampoo and Mousse, he was almost certain this pin had had a part in it.
"This is all YOUR FAULT..." Ranma snarled through gritted teeth, winding back his arm to chuck the Kami forsaken thing as far away as he possibly could.
Shin blanched, seeing what Ranma was about to do. "Ranma, you're not thinking clearly! Calm down!"
Ranma froze mid throw. "...that so? Because I think I'm thinking very clearly. This thing screwed me over in a major way."
"No, Shin's right!" Juu shouted, her stutter all but forgotten. "You can't throw that! We're not sure it's even a psyche, it's our player pin! Every player has one, you need that pin to play the game at all! If you throw that you'll never get back to life! You probably won't even survive the day!"
At that, Ranma lowered his arm. Well of course. It figured that the time traveling pin was a crucial item for this stupid game. "...so I have to keep this until the game is over? Given what's it's done so far, I'd really rather not have it on me all the time... so long as I don't have to use it, I guess..." Then again, he probably would need it to return to the past, so maybe it was best they'd stopped him from throwing it regardless of its "game" importance.
Shin shook his head. "No, Ranma, you'll have to use it. It's the only thing that can let you find and fight Noise."
"Well what good is it to come back to life then?!" Ranma snapped. "If every time you use this thing ya' get sent farther forward in time, what's the point of coming back to life?! After only two uses I'm 20 years ahead of when I should be, so unless I can find a time traveling artifact, which are kind of rare, I'll probably get stuck a hundred years or more in the future! WE'D be stuck that far in the future! Why are you two so... okay with that?!"
Shin and Juu were utterly perplexed. Forward in time? Future? What was he talking about?
"Ranma," Shin started, "the pin doesn't do anything to time. I guess it sort of slows things down, but that's only how it seems to the user. Aside from letting you see and fight noise, as well as read minds, it does nothing besides mark you as a player. It can't be used in battle, or at least that was the impression we were under..." Shin frowned. "Although, I admit we haven't exactly tried that yet. We've only been in two battles, one of which was the one you had to save us from. The other we did on the way to find you, just so we could practice using our normal psyches."
"Bullshit it does nothing to time. When I..." Ranma trailed off, support to Shin's claim suddenly coming to mind. Come to think of it, immediately after waking up dead, he'd seen people using those phones, which was before he'd ever used that pin. Before he'd even picked it up, in fact. Nothing had "changed" between the before and after of him obtaining the pin, he still had gotten a quick view of the populace and buildings before he'd stepped on it. Everyone had had those same cell phones before he'd even touched the thing. If they only were that advanced because he was in the future, then the pin couldn't be the cause...
Juu interrupted his thought process with a simple question. "So... does that mean... you're a time traveler?"
oOoOo
"...come ON! This is zetta boring! From what you've said, you were all on board with this until that radian got himself fractalized, so give me one good reason I should stick around any longer than a single planck!"
"Man, you really need to calm down... when I said I wanted to talk I didn't mean argue. Here, have some coffee."
"I don't WANT any coffee! What I WANT is to leave this shop so I can take out the new insignificant figure in this equation!"
"You need to stay put for now. The time will come, but here and now is not it. Trust me, I wouldn't recommend trying what you're thinking at the moment."
"Oh? And if I decided to just walk out of here right now, exactly how the factor would you stop me?"
"...do you really need me to answer that? I showed you how once already."
"...fine. How long am I stuck hanging around this dump then?"
"Until the end of the week. Feel free to kick back and relax until then. Of course, I somehow doubt you actually will, given how much effort I know you put into practice every week."
"Got that right. Her erasure is gonna be so acute that this plane won't know what hit it."
"I figured as much. Train all you like, but keep the destruction to a minimum."
...
"...oh, and no giant piles made of the furnishings, got it?"
"...factor."
mMmMm
The week is only gonna get MORE stressful and confusing, Ranma. You might want to stop freaking out every time you learn something surprising. To everyone else? It'll all make sense eventually. When Ranma finally gets all the facts straight. Mwahahahaha.
For those wondering, this takes place shortly after the end of the anime. Ranma hasn't faced Herb or Saffron, and is still sixteen. Figured I'd clear that up since I doubt a place will be found in story to do so any time soon.
Also, I'm trying to avoid use of "God", but technically "Kami" (and yes, "Kami-Sama" also) is just as incorrect. So what am I supposed to do when its use is called for? I doubt I can work around it every time it seems necessary. Any suggestions? (To clarify, after a review stated I should just use "Kami-Sama"- Kami more accurately means "spirit", and has no literal translation. We colloquially use it as a synonym for a Shinto deity or God, even "The" God, but a better translation would probably be something like both The Force and the spirits it gives birth too, holding everything together while also being a part of everything via spirits. So... yeah, it's still an incorrect use. Maybe I'm worried too much about something this small though.)