Hello, people, i had this idea and sketched it out for later
followup. Since there are SIX Bet parodies out there that i
know of, i thought i'd throw this one out there so those same
persons could just go ahead and write chapters using this
device. (No, i'm not that nieve, merely the remains of a nice
guy still trying to get along.)

CRUX POINT 1:

 There was an awkward silence. Kasumi reached with
trembling hand to lift the teacup. "Well, Mousse, what brings
you to our door after all these years?"

 Mousse frowned. Kasumi's voice was cracked with
age and raspy from too many illnesses left untreated. Mousse
let it pass after a moment. "You know about Ranma's death, right?"

 Nabiki snorted. "Yeah. We got the message. Back
in 2003, wasn't it? Twenty years ago. Not that he stuck around 
home very much in those days anyway."

 Kasumi frowned. "After all he survived, from one
villain after another, all the fights, to die in his sleep." It just
didn't seem right.

 Mousse shrugged. "Worse ways to go. It cures 
a Jusenkyo curse victim roughly half the time. The other times..."

 "So you're cured." Nabiki resisted the temptation 
to throw water on their guest. "So tell us, what's going on 
that brings you to Shinjuku? Why not visit Nerima and Akane,
or Ukyou's grave, or where that fat panda and his wife died in
the Great Earthquake?"

 "Ukyou committed seppuku. Shampoo failed the
tribe, accepted that she'd spend ten years locked in her cursed
fprm and died that way during floods back in 2003, just months
before she would have been returned to normal. Right after she
learned that Ranma was dead. Your father died in 2001, trying to
find Ranma and get him to return to Akane."

 "We know all this. We also know about Akane
never trusting Ranma, the two of them fighting, and Ranma
not having the balls to just get a divorce so he left on those
damn 'training trips' just like his old man did."

 Mousse stared briefly at Kasumi, trying to reconcile
the angelic nineteen year old of his memory with this gray haired
fifty year old who looked as if a happy thought would die of
loneliness before it ever reached her face.

 "I came here for advice," Mousse admitted after
a moment. "You see, when Ranma passed on, he had this 
with him." Mousse drew a small object out of his robes.

 "The Nanban Mirror?" Nabiki removed her glasses
to clean them so she could get a better look. "I thought that was
smashed."

 "It WAS broken," Mousse admitted. "It took almost
twenty years to fix it. HOW to use it, well, that's where I need the
advice."

 "You want a happy ending," said Kasumi. "Well, I've
got news for you, duckboy. There ain't no such thing."

 "Kasumi, you need to take your medication."

 "I thought she and Doctor Tofu," Mousse began.

 Nabiki shook her head and waited until Kasumi had
left. "Don't start. His mother found out that the Tendo family
has a couple of problems. Neither is really important, but the
marriage was deemed unsuitable by her, big hips or not."

 "Ah," Mousse nodded, not really understanding.

 "So you want to figure out the Crux Point. A time
where you could go back, manipulate events, and have things
turn out for the better."

 "Well, yes." Mousse blinked at Nabiki, his own
eyesight having been surgically corrected years ago. "That's
the history of the Nanban, actually. The Mirror of Regret. To
go back and remake a decision, to avert a tragedy, to change
what was."

 "Like Jusenkyo, it has a price, I'm sure." Nabiki
sat back and regarded the Chinese man across from her. "Oh,
don't be too surprised, I KNOW about Jusenkyo now. How passing
the test of Jusenkyo granted you a wish until 2250 years ago, one
of those passing the test made the stupidest wish. That the 'whole
thing was tougher' - resulting in the Curse Of The Springs."

 "So, Nabiki Tendo," Mousse watched the middle
sister as she lit up a cigarette and took a deep drag. "Don't you
have any regrets?"

 "Regrets? I'll give you regrets." Nabiki snorted smoke
out of her nostrils in a gesture her father often used. "I regret NOT
moving out of Japan when I had the chance. I regret NOT pursuing
more of my college ambitions. I regret taking up this filthy habit."

 Stubbing her barely started cigarette out on the table,
Nabiki stared into Mousse's eyes. "I regret that I stopped interfering
in the great Akane-Ranma love affair. I regret watching Kuno-baby
unleash a LIVE sword at their wedding. I regret setting up that false
engagement with Ranma, only to give him right back to Akane a little
while later. I regret all the interference when I could have been trying
to get them to accept one another instead of arranging things so that
they'd still be fighting and bickering long after their marriage.

 "I REGRET not choosing Ranma to begin with. I also regret
letting my sister get into some of the problems she had later, some of 
which were MY doing."

 "Such as having to fight all those guys in the morning."

 Nabiki nodded. "It made for good betting. Made money for
the house, plus got Akane all the sparring partners she could ask for.
In retrospect, though, it just got her to hate boys all the more. I regret
STARTING to interfere in the Akane-Ranma thing."

 "I have regrets too." Kasumi returned and sat back down
again. "I regret Doctor Tofu learning..."

 "We are NOT burakumin," Nabiki said, shaking her head.
"Close, but no cigar. Not that it should have made ANY difference."

 "What?" Mousse looked the two over, then decided not
to pursue it any further. Whatever it was didn't matter.

 "What about just killing Ranma before he goes through
the catfist training," Kasumi's voice was soft and her gaze haunted.
"All things considered it would have been far kinder."

 "Phoenix Mountain," replied Mousse. "He was needed
at that point. Without him, my people might have perished. At the
very least Jusenkyo would have been destroyed."

 "What not go back and win Shampoo?"

 Mousse chuckled. "I didn't do such a great job of it
the first time, did I? I'd always told myself that eventually she
would come to love me. She never did. If I had been able to see
THAT ahead of time, who knows?"

 "Too bad you can't see how a course of action 
will turn out before you commit to it."

 Mousse glanced over to Kasumi. "Actually you
can. If you change the past, the change to the future is not
instantaneous. It moves along like a ripple in the stream. It's
2023 now, figure the change takes an hour to rewrite a decade.
Also, if you're holding the mirror, you remember the changes
that have taken place."

 "You've done this before then," Nabiki deduced.
"And it didn't help, did it?"

 Mousse sighed. "Correct. In the original timeline
I came from, Ranma hadn't died in 2003 from alcohol poisoning.
He got back to his home to find Akane in bed, having an affair
with one of her old friends from high school. He committed
seppuku two days later."

 Kasumi blinked. "Had to be Sayuri."

 Nabiki nodded.

 "The only thing I'd tried to do was change how
Shampoo was originally cursed. If she hadn't been small and
helpless, she wouldn't have died like that."

 "So she wasn't originally cursed to turn into a
hedgehog?"

 "Actually, she originally turned into a cat."
Mousse shook his head. "The WORST thing for her as far
as Ranma was concerned. Which brings me to my second
concern."

 "What's that?" Nabiki looked at her stubbed out
cigarette and tried to determine if it would be worth the effort
of lighting it up again.

 "How many little coincidences do YOU recall
floating around Saotome? Particularly with that pull apart-
push together relationship with your sister?" Mousse saw
he had their attention now, especially Nabiki's. "What if it
wasn't ALL coincidence? I just started thinking about this
after I tried my change, but what if there was someone else,
manipulating events so that Ranma and Akane would be in
this kind of abusive relationship?

 "I remember you telling me once, long ago, that
the first time the male Ranma and Akane saw each other,
Akane had walked in on Ranma in the bath. She didn't do
that very often did she? Or Ranma walking in on her later?
Symmetrical, true. Coincidence?"

 "So that someone may have manipulating ME.
Making me waste time in the blackmail and gambling operations
when the main thing was to earn money for the dojo?"
Nabiki paused, the thought that it might not have been
entirely her fault being strangely seductive.

 Kasumi's eyes flickered hard. "The reason that
I'm fifty and never known a lover is because someone 
manipulated events? Interesting...theory."

 Mousse stared unblinking for several moments.
"Oh, yes, that's what I thought. I mean, that someone else
for reasons unknown, were fixated on maintaining several
things through that fateful two years. The relationship 
between Akane and Ranma, with the occasional warm and
fuzzy moments followed by hours of accusations and anger,
is a good example."

 "Interesting theory."

 "I needed to sound it off on you. If it sounded
plausible to you, then I can take it to Cologne. She refuses
to allow the Nanban and similar artifacts to be used, but if
we are trying to correct someone ELSE's meddling with time..."

 Nabiki nodded. "It's a good theory. It would fit...
a number of things that happened. Things that seemed awfully
contrived even then. Hmmm."

 "With her help, perhaps you can figure out how to
change things for the better." Kasumi didn't want to allow herself
and degree of hope, but that little glimmer of hope just insisted on
making itself felt anyway.
----------------------------------------------
 Okay, that's the setup. Nice little framing device for
a three or four chapter set, ain't it?
 Each of our intrepid survivors deciding to go back
in time and FIX something, trying to find a way to get happily
ever after out of this.
 The mechanism is described above.
 The players are all older and more cynical, in some
cases a LOT more cynical, with one exception. Cologne hasn't
really changed that much, except she doesn't see Ranma marrying
Shampoo as necessary if Ranma never defeats Shampoo.
 Mousse doesn't necessarily want Shampoo. There
turned out to be another girl, one who was better suited for him,
but he blew her off because he was so focussed on Shampoo.
 Nabiki doesn't want to end up an Office Lady in a
deadend job, turning to the bottle for solace.
 Kasumi doesn't want to end up an old maid.
 NONE of them want this particular future to develop.

Like i said, this would be a LONG ways in the future, but it was
one of those concepts i just had to set down before i could move
on to other things.

ja ne,
gregg