Flashback
Ranma's first clue that something had gone wrong with his attempt to use the repaired Nanban Mirror was the barren landscape he found himself in. The second clue was the burning in his lungs as the strange-smelling air he breathed in failed to provide him with any oxygen. The fact that there were eight girls with him, and a woman in a sailor suit, on the other hand, was odd but told him nothing.
Usagi, Ami, Mina, Rei, Makoto, Hotaru, Haruka, and Micheru had no idea what was going on. One moment they had been enjoying a day off from school mostly separately; the next they were in a barren landscape together, and unable to breath despite the fact that there was definitely air of some kind around them.
Sailor Pluto had seen enough before the shift to figure out what was going on, but was more concerned about the air quality at the moment. Making use of a power that (from the perspective of the Senshi) hadn't been used since the colonization of the planets during the Silver Millennium, she thrust her hands into the air, and called out, "Pluto Power - Atmospheric Shield!"
A purple sphere appeared in her hands, and shot several feet up into the air before expanding rapidly downwards, until it had engulfed everyone and formed a dome around them.
Ranma and the Senshi coughed out the bad air they had breathed, and took in gasping breaths of the purified and oxygenated air within the dome.
Haruka was the first to give voice to the question on most of their minds. "All right, now that we can breath; what the heck is going on?!"
Pluto took a moment to go over everything in her head. As she did this, the other girls all looked at each other, to see if anyone had an idea.
Ranma tugged at his pigtail uncertainly. "Well, I was trying to use the repaired Nanban mirror to travel back in time and prevent myself from getting this curse I have, but apparently it wasn't as repaired as I thought it was." He held up the backing of the mirror, which held just a few shards of glass in it. "It exploded, and sent me to wherever and whenever we are now. I don't know what any of you are doing here, though."
Makoto asked, "You had a mirror that allowed you to travel through time?"
Pluto pointed out, "The Gates of Time are far from the only method of Time Travel."
Mina said cheerfully to Ranma, "Well, maybe Sailor Moon can cleanse you of your curse?"
Ranma asked, "Are you saying she's real?"
Mina pointed to Pluto. "A Sailor Senshi is standing right there, and you have to ask?"
Ranma said in surprise, "You're one of the Senshi?"
Pluto nodded. "Sailor Pluto."
Usagi asked, "Do you know what's going on, Pluto?"
"I believe I do." Apologetically, she added, "And I'm afraid it's at least partially my fault we are where and when we are." Pluto took a deep breath. "Apparently, all the time travel that occurred during the millennia preceding and following the twentieth century greatly weakened the stability of the timestream. Unaware of this fact, I recently attempted to correct a divergence from the proper time-line which had occured, and triggered a Paradox Storm."
The others wondered what a Paradox Storm was, and Usagi was the one to give the question voice. "A... Paradox Storm? What's that?"
Pluto answered, "A storm of temporal energy raging through the timestream... During one, even the slightest changes to the past can cause vast changes to the present, trips through time become quite dangerous and hard to control, and even observing the time-stream risks altering it." Pluto paused, then added, "It can also have other effects - for instance, this storm caused the ten of us to be temporally linked, shattered my Time Key Staff, sent Ranma off course in his time trip, and likely played a part in the Nanban Mirror's destruction."
"What exactly do you mean when you say we're temporally linked?" This time it was Rei to voice the question.
"Whenever one of us travels through time, the rest of us are dragged along for the journey. This is why all of us have wound up in this era, when Ranma was the only one attempting to travel through time. Also, no matter what changes happen to the time-line, we are all destined to meet, now."
After everyone had thought about this for a few moments, Ranma spoke up. "Okay, let me see if I got this straight..."
End Flashback
Mina asked, "So the only living things around right now is bacteria and pond scum?"
Ami looked uncertain. "That depends on exactly when during the Precambrian we are... " She glanced to Pluto.
Pluto coughed into her hand, and said, "We're approximately four billion years in the past. Life won't appear on the Earth for another hundred million years or so."
While most of the group were trying to wrap their brains around the idea of being so far in the past, or of just the huge size of the numbers themselves, Ami's eyes widened for a different reason. "That's why the air isn't breathable!"
Usagi, Ranma, Mina, Makoto and Haruka all said, "Huh?"
Ami explained, "Plants and other living things are the source of most of the oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere. Before life existed, the atmosphere was mostly methane, hydrogen, ammonia, and carbon dioxide. In fact, even after life appeared on the Earth it took hundreds of millions of years before oxygen started to build up in the atmosphere."
Usagi blinked. "Can you hold up this shield that long, Pluto?"
Rei slapped her head. "Idiot! Even with Senshi powers we're wouldn't be likely to live that long! Even the time until life first appears is a hundred times the length humans had been on the Earth in our time - if nothing else, we'd die from sheer boredom long before then."
Mina pointed out, "Actually, if there's no life out there, I don't see how we can even last a normal lifetime - what are we going to eat?"
(Posted Tue, 01 Apr 2008 20:05)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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