A Different Path
A Ranma / Sailor Moon crossover
Part Five
By Raye Johnsen

'Ranma 1/2' is copyright Takahashi Rumiko, Shogakukan and Viz Communications.  'Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon' is copyright Takeuchi Naoko and other interested parties.  If you think I'm making any money or have any rights to any of this, you are very, very wrong.

Chapter Five: A Breathing Space

Setsuna stretched as she stepped out of the time gates.  It was always a relief to return to this place, to this time... to her home.  She sighed with pleasure as the fuku dissolved away into the street clothes she wore whenever she considered herself 'off-duty'.

Her fingers brushed against a lump in her pocket, and Setsuna frowned.  One last thing remained.

Carefully, Setsuna stepped away from the family shrine, clapping her hands together twice in the prescribed form.  The smoke from the incense sticks curled up and tickled her nose, and she sniffed the perfumed smoke happily.  Some of the other members of the family burned sandalwood for the ancestors, but Setsuna preferred to use a variety of scents.  It wasn't usual, but her father's family had never been noted for its attention to the conventional, and Setsuna thought they might enjoy some small variety; she certainly did.  In the twenty-first century, she had found a packet of apple-blossom incense, and three sticks of it now stood, burning proudly upright in front of the old photographs of her parents' families, the virulent green dye that coloured the sticks a clashing contrast to the black-and-white and brightly-coloured portraits.

She opened the small cupboard beside the shrine where the ancestors' incense was kept, carefully placing the seventeen remaining sticks to one side, so that nobody looking for sandalwood would pick it up by accident. She was quite pleased to see that the rose and jasmine incenses she had brought back in a similar fashion had been used.  Closing the cupboard, she listened and heard a clatter in the kitchen.

Now for the part she had been dreading: talking to her parents.

Setsuna peeped around the corner into the kitchen, and saw, with dread, that it was Mama in there.

She loved her mother.  Truly, she did.  But Mama had cooking skills exactly, but exactly, up to the same level as Neo-Queen Serenity.  She made a good cup of tea, if she used a teabag.  She made a truly tasty curry.  Plain rice from Mama's hands was edible.  But that was it.  Anything else came out... well, it didn't.

It was lucky for her family that they all really liked curry.  King Endymion and Small Lady weren't quite so fortunate.

"Come in, Setsuna!"

She'd been spotted.  Trying to look as if she hadn't been lurking around the corner, scouting out the situation, Setsuna strolled into the kitchen.  "Hello, Mama."  Oh, good, she *was* making curry, and not... something else.

"What's wrong, dear?" Mama asked, the reddish flecks in her dark eyes beginning to swirl around, as they did whenever her emotions were stirred up.  "Are you all right?"  Setsuna felt the currents of power begin to stir, as they started to respond to Mama's emotional state.  She suddenly remembered exactly why every florist, jeweller and chocolatier in the city was prepared to drop everything when Papa came in and to give him credit on rush jobs.

"I'm *fine*, Mama," Setsuna said quickly.  A shade too quickly.  The power, if anything, intensified.

"What happened, Setsuna?" Mama asked again, almost too quietly.

"*Nothing*, Mama!  I just got back from old Tokyo - and, and, um, what I had to do there."

The power flows settled back down again; Setsuna had the sudden mental image of a group of sleepy dragons settling back into their naps with tired yawns and muttered imprecations at that stupid alarm clock.

Mama tilted her head to one side while she chopped the carrots - unevenly, but Setsuna wasn't going to point this out to her.  "I thought you quite liked visiting old Tokyo."

Setsuna sighed, and pulled the family's signet stamp out of her pocket, setting it down on the bench between them.  "It wasn't a visit, Mama."

Her mother stared at the signet, and her nostrils flared.  The dragons were jerked to full wakefulness, and the knife came down so hard on the carrot it nearly broke the chopping board.

"So," Mama hissed.  "So."  He hands were clenched on the handle of the knife and on the chopping board, so tightly her knuckles were white and the wood of both handle and board were starting to crack.

"I'm sorry, Mama!  I'm sorry!"  Setsuna said desperately.  "I didn't *want* to do it!  I swear I didn't!  But there was no other way!"

There was the sound of running feet outside, and then Papa shoved the door from the kitchen to the backyard open.  He'd obviously been practicing, as he was wearing his loose 'practice' clothing, and his hair was tied behind him.  "Dear, what's wrong?" he demanded.  "Setsuna?"

Setsuna stood up and stepped back from the kitchen bench.  "Papa - I just got back from twenty-first century Tokyo.  It wasn't a visit."  She nodded at the family signet lying on the bench, which both Mama and Papa were staring at as if it were made of weapons-grade plutonium instead of antique ivory.

The door frame cracked where Papa was gripping it. His face was absolutely cold, as if it were carved of marble, not flesh.

"Papa, I-"

"Go home, Setsuna," Papa said clearly, coldly, as if she were eleven, not twenty-one.  "Your mother and I need to calm down before we can talk about this."

She stepped back, and then fled the room.  As she ran out the front door, her brother ran around the corner. "What happened, Elder Sister?"

"I did my *job*," she muttered mutinously.  "It's not even as if I *liked* it!  And now -"

Her brother shook his head.  "You mucked with the *parents*?"

Setsuna glared at him.  "I had to!  And now I'm being kicked out of the family!"

"I wouldn't say *that*," her brother said, judiciously.  "More like - having your status reconsidered...."

"Shut *up*, Ryo," his sister suggested.

"You know them, they'll calm down eventually."

"Ryo...."

"Yes?"

"... Shut up."

Kasumi got out of the taxi at the base of Cherry Hill.  It was, she noticed, a very beautiful place.

Cherry Hill Temple was set, as temples usually were, on top of the hill, so Kasumi began to climb the traditional thousand steps to the gate, and thought about how she would phrase her request to the shrine maiden.  She pulled the envelope Akane's note had arrived in out of her pocket, carefully examining the postmark again.  It still clearly said 'Juuban'.

This temple was not the largest, the best-kept or the most popular temple in this area, but Cherry Hill Temple had one thing that no other temple could boast. Its shrine maiden was psychic.

Kasumi sighed.  In the old days, a shrine maiden was a potent warrior against the forces of evil.  Now, they were just girls who dressed up once or twice a month.  Except for a few, who were, by nature or inclination, far more.  And, if rumour were speaking truth, the shrine maiden here was one of those chosen few.

Although she had been unsure when she climbed out of the taxi, Kasumi was growing more and more reassured as she placed her foot on each step.  This place was so beautiful, nobody of evil intent could possibly live here; and there was such an aura of peace and tranquillity that could only be the product of somebody of power and purity dwelling there....

"GIVE ME BACK MY COMIC BOOK, USAGI!!"

Kasumi stared in bewilderment as a girl with long blonde pigtails charged down the steps beside her, closely followed by another girl with long black hair. She stopped for a little time and waited, and then continued up the rest of the way.

Another girl, dressed in the traditional red and white of a shrine maiden, was sweeping leaves to one side of the courtyard.  Feeling emboldened by the return of the peaceful quiet, Kasumi crossed over to her.  "Excuse me please, miss...."

The girl turned to face her.

"AKANE!"

Nadeshiko found herself being enthusiastically glomped by her coolly-affectionate older sister.

"... so you do see," Nadeshiko explained patiently, "why I'm going to stay here?"

Kasumi sighed and picked up her cup of tea.  She sipped, and said, "Yes, I do understand.  I just think you're wrong.  Ranma and all your little friends ar out scouring Japan, looking for you.  They all seem to believe you have been kidnapped."

Nadeshiko blinked.  "Didn't they get the letters I sent?"

"Oh, yes.  But for some reason they believe you were made to  write them."

"I don't know where they could have gotten that idea," Nadeshiko said firmly.  "But as you can see, it's not true."

"Well, when you tell them that -"

"NO!" Nadeshiko all-but-yelled.  "I'm sorry, Elder Sister," she said, in a more sedate tone, "but I cut all my ties.  I'll write, but I won't see them."

A quarter of an hour later, Nadeshiko was watching Kasumi's taxi drive off towards Nerima.

"I won't see them, Elder Sister," she repeated to herself.  "I'm not strong enough yet."