Wishing that he had something other than the body suit that Washu had given him to wear, Ranma prepared himself for bed. The suit was better than nothing after all, and supposedly could repair itself somehow if it was damaged in any way. Maybe the Tendo's wouldn't mind getting Ranma a few things to wear after he'd been here a bit.
Ranma was still contemplating the merits of this possibility when a holographic image of Washu popped in front of him from out of nowhere. "Ha, it worked! Finally! I was beginning to think contacting you was a lost cause, Ranma!" declared the life sized image of Washu.
"Uh, yeah. I think I can see where contacting me ten years in the past from another dimension would be kind of difficult," Ranma replied in a dead monotone. He liked the way he was being treated here so far, but this wasn’t where Ranma was supposed to be.
"Aw, don't get your panties in a twist, Ranma; I did my best. Besides, the transfer did work, just not the way I was expecting it to," the scientist countered defensively, folding her arms for added effect.
"I suppose you've got a point, Wahsu. But being stuck ten years in my own past still sucks, even if it is better than winding up in the wrong place altogether," Ranma conceded reluctantly, giving Washu the credit she deserved.
"What was that, Ranma?" Washu asked him in dangerous tone. Apparently she was going to insist on the 'chan' even from a whole dimension away.
Ranma rolled his eyes in response. "Sorry, I mean you've got a point, Washu-chan," he amended, adding the required diminutive to her name. Ranma still didn't know why, but Washu had this thing about being spoken to like she was still a kid.
Washu's glare eased off a bit, but didn't exactly go away. "That's better, Ranma. Now as for why I'm contacting you like this. I thought that you deserved to know what happened when I sent you back home. Apparently the modified containment field I tried to use didn't work as well as I hopped it would. Put simply, it leaked," she told him in a serious tone.
Ranma didn't know what that meant, but it sounded like it was supposed to be bad. "So what does that mean for me exactly," he asked her, fearing the worst. For all Ranma knew, Washu could be telling him that he only had a short time left to live, or something like that.
Washu groaned, but it was more like she was annoyed than worried about anything. "For you specifically, not much. You just lost a lot of mass, about eighty percent or so, I’m guessing. But that's not what I called to tell you about either," she replied, sounding resigned.
She paused to take a deep breath before continuing on with her explanation. "Basically, since the containment buffer wasn't adequate, you got 'Divided', Ranma. I can't be certain how many parts you were divided into either I'm afraid. I've only been able to track where the biggest pieces of you went; you're also the first portion of yourself, that actually left, that I've been able to get a hold of. You, along with two other large pieces of yourself, made it back home; only you arrived ten years before you ever left. However, the other two pieces of you that also made it back home arrived there later. I haven't completely pinned their locations down yet, so I can't really say how much later," she told him tiredly.
"But I'll worry about their problems later, like when I can get some kind of message through to them. Right now though, all I'm worried about is giving you some fair warning about what's happened to you, Ranma. I'm pretty good at timespace mechanics and inter-dimensional theory. But I don't think anyone's ever had to mix the two before. I THINK I know what's going on, but there is/ a marginal chance that I'm wrong. But if I’m right, then you're not really in the dimension I sent you back to anymore, Ranma," Washu explained, losing Ranma completely this time.
"Huh?" Ranma asked thoroughly confused now, this certainly looked like home, it was just the wrong time period. "Sorry, Washu-chan, you've lost me somewhere," Ranma said, openly admitting that he didn’t understand the explanation.
Washu groaned in annoyance at having to 'explain' her explanation, but she was used to it, even if she didn't like it too much. "Okay, Ranma, think of it this way. For every choice you make, there's theoretically a dimension or reality for every option you could have taken. Now then, if you were to forcibly introduce another option to the normal ones, then the dimensional tree would have to split and form a new branch with it's own mirco possibilities to compensate. That's just the way it works." Washu told him, still using terms a bit bigger than Ranma could handle.
"But what all that means in a nutshell is that when you made it 'home', the inter-dimensional law of infinite probability formed a brand new dimension around you, Ranma. One based off your reinsertion point ten years into your original past. Which means that despite appearances, Ranma, that's not really your past anymore," Washu explained to him.
That explanation made a bit more sense, but he still didn't understand what Washu was getting at. "Okay, then. So when I arrived here in the past this copy of it formed around me so that I couldn't mess up my real past. But what exactly does all that mean for me, Washu-chan?" Ranma asked the scientist, trying very hard to grasp what she was trying to tell him.
"What it means Ranma, it that where you're at now isn't the 'past' that you grew up in. In reality it's your new present. People will still do things and act the way they did before, PROVIDED that you don't change what they were going to do originally, directly or indirectly. Nothing you do there will effect the past you remember having, but everything you do will affect what everyone around you does the same way it always has. Basically, in as little as a month, you could change things so drastically that NOTHING is the way you remember* it happening and it still won't affect you past or anything that happened before you arrived there, Ranma.
"In other words . . . I should basically just sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride without worrying about ruining my own past?" Ranma attempted to summarize what he'd just been told.
Washu nodded happily at Ranma's breakdown of what she'd just told him. "Basically, yeah. Unless you want to hibernate somewhere for about ten years until things get to the point you remember leaving, that is. But I wouldn't recommend it though, ten years worth of foreknowledge is an awfully big advantage to just sleep away," she told Ranma in her normally cheerful voice.
"Anyway, Ranma, I'm gonna have to recharge my communications array soon. I just wanted to give you a heads up on what happened, and why I couldn't do anything about it for you. That and wish you good luck with your new life, I hope everything works out for you there," Washu finished up.
Ranma only got as far as saying, "thanks, Washu-chan" before she cut the transmission off and Washu's holographic image disappeared from sight. Despite his expectations though, it was surprisingly easy for Ranma to sleep that night after Washu had told him what was going on. It kind of made sense in a strange way too, Washu couldn't fix Ranma's current situation because there wasn’t anything to be fixed anymore, regardless of what it looked like.
As much as she hated leaving her family behind, the soul that was Kimiko Tendo was happy enough where she was. She was currently in a small two room apartment that was hers until she felt ready to be reincarnated into a new life. It was both painful and comforting to watch, but Kimiko's 'television' had a channel that let her watch her family whenever she wanted to see them. The comfort, of course, came from being able to see her darling family again. The pain, on the other hand, came from watching her once happy family tear itself apart from grief.
Kimiko Tendo sincerely prayed that her family's suffering would be brief and that they would move on with their lives as she had asked them to before her death. Admittedly, a week was too soon to expect them to be recovering from her loss. But it pained poor Kimiko to see how bad things had gotten at home in the short time that she'd been away from them. Her sweet little children were still having nightmares about her dying in a hospital bed in Nerima General. Poor little Kasumi was trying to take it on herself to follow on in Kimiko's footsteps by taking care of meals and the house in general.
The only ray of light since her death seemed to be this strange Ranma Saotome person who'd arrived at her family's home while they were out visiting Kimiko's grave site. At first Kimiko had been leery and distrustful of this Ranma and his ghostly powers, especially since he wasn't actually a ghost. She'd been furious when the lout had eaten her family's food without permission, consuming the same meal little Kasumi had intended for their dinner. Then on top of that he'd had the audacity to sleep in their home as if he'd belonged there.
But this same Ranma had made amends though, and apologized to her Kasumi for stealing their dinner. It was somewhat amusing, after the fact, that Kasumi had decided that this Ranma was her family's new guardian angel. Of course Kimiko only thought it was funny because this Ranma, who wasn't any sort of angel, seemed to believe that he had to play the part of one anyway. At least he had some decent qualifications for attempting the job anyway. The way that he, she at the time, had teleported across the room to save Kasumi from some falling dishes had been a reassuring surprise. It was also the main reason Kimiko wasn't kicking up a major fuss about him being there.
Then, as she watched her children on her so-called television, Kimiko found one more reason to like the imposter. One by one, starting with Akane, Kimiko's children had woken up form a nightmare, only to walk downstairs to Ranma's room and creep into his futon with him. But the part that warmed Kimiko's heart was the way Ranma had accepted each one of them with a reassuring hug. True he hadn't woken up at all when he'd received them, but it was another good sign about this Ranma's character all the same. It was even nicer that her children's belief that Ranma was THEIR guardian angel allowed them to sleep the rest of the night without any more unpleasant dreams.
'Switching stations' to a nearby room in the house, Kimiko was pleased to find out that her widowed husband was also benefitting from the imposter's presence. It seemed that her husband was even more convinced of Ranma's 'divinity' than her children were. Although he also seemed to think that Ranma's arrival was a sign that Kimiko was still looking after him and their children. 'He's such a big baby sometimes,' Kimiko laughed to herself, partially wishing that her husband's assumptions really were true.
So far, Ranma's arrival here from this strange alternate future of his, along with her family's beliefs about him were helping her family. Which made Kimiko very happy for now, even if he was effectively an imposter. But dead or not, Kimiko simply hoped that this Ranma didn't do even more damage to her family's fragile state by letting them down later on. If that were to happen, then she might not ever forgive him at all. But for now at least, Kimiko could hope for the best, and laugh about things while she still could.
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(Posted Thu, 30 Oct 2008 19:43)
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