Of All Possible Worlds

This, guys and gals, is why I don't do complex plots. Once again, the plot would have probably worked as well/better as a chapterfic, but I'm just not doing chapterfics any more, even if I stop writing fics specifically for oneshot contests. If I ever decide to start a new chapterfic, I'm writing the whole damn thing as a oneshot and then chopping it up, because I clearly fail hard at writing them the normal way.

Anyhow, this is a dual entry for Forever Mesmerised's Ryou/Ichigo contest and Saba's Reflection's Invincible contest. Thanks to both of you for letting me sneak this entry just under the deadline, and for letting me enter the same story in both of your contests. And a special thanks to Immortal x Snow, who let me bounce crazy plot ideas off her way back at the beginning of the month when I should have been writing this.

Disclaimer 1: All characters portrayed herein belong to Rei Yoshida, Mia Ikumi, et al., and since all of them capitalize their names properly, you knowthey can't be me.

Disclaimer 2: I do not claim that any part of this fic is scientifically accurate. I could probably hammer out a mostly-functional idea (or change the elements in question to better reflect current scientific theories) if I had more time, but I am not a hard sci-fi writer, and that is just not one of my storytelling concerns. Oh, and "FTL" means faster than light travel. See, if you hadn't read the disclaimers, you might have missed that. :)

-Alpha-

Café Mew Mew brimmed with the sounds of celebration. After a long, arduous fight, they had finally sent the aliens back to their own planet, and the relief in the air was palpable. The five girls could barely believe it, but here they were, the saviors of the world. It almost made their losses worth it.

Ryou Shirogane sat in a far corner of his basement lab, but even there, he could not totally escape the happy noise above him. There came a rapping at his door, and he reluctantly made his way over and pulled it open, blinking as light from the hallway spilled into the darkened laboratory.

"Gosh, it's so dark in here," Berri Shirayuki said lightly as she walked in. Behind her, Keiichiro Akasaka flipped on the lights. Ryou flinched at the sudden brightness.

"Everyone misses you up there, Ryou," Keichiiro said. "Why don't you come up and join us? This is your day as much as it is ours." The blond man half-turned away, not deigning to respond. Berri's garnet eyes softened, and she laid a hand on Ryou's arm.

"I know you miss her. And even though we never actually met, after hearing everybody talk about her so much, I miss her too. But Ryou..." She paused, giving him a chance to respond. When he said nothing, she continued. "Sitting down here in the dark moping isn't going to bring her back. C'mon upstairs. Ichigo would want you to be happy, especially now." At that, Ryou turned fully away and brushed off her hand.

She retracted it, rubbing it as though he had slapped her. Without another word, she brushed past Keiichiro and made her way back up the stairs, her wheat hair swaying as she turned back again and again to glance concernedly at him.

"You can leave too," Ryou added sullenly, but Keiichiro stayed put.

"She's right, you know," the brunet said slowly, as though he was afraid of being misheard. "Ichigo wouldn't want you to do anything stupid for her sake, especially if it means jeopardizing the victory she died for. And this?" He rapped his knuckles against what looked like a metallic belt covered in dials and displays, which was sprawled haphazardly over a lab table. "This is stupid. Not to mention dangerous..." Ryou just watched him passively, the blond's flat expression not even changing.

"Are you going to try to stop me?" Keiichiro could, he knew. He had the device under his hand. All he had to do was pull off some of the instruments, or throw it to the ground and crush it with his heel. Then, if he kept an eye on Ryou until the shorter man was feeling better, this whole crisis would be averted. All it would cost him would be Ryou's friendship.

"No," he replied with a sigh.

The blond didn't respond to that, just slipped the metallic belt out from under Keiichiro's unresisting fingers. As he fastened it around his waist, Keiichiro left the lab. He wasn't going to stop Ryou, but that doesn't mean he wanted to have any part in this insanity.

Alone, Ryou set the coordinates and fired it up. There was a sound like a knife sliding over silk as the lab's cold lights took on an amber hue, and then he was gone.

-Beta-

His timing and positioning were perfect. Ryou's old self, the one that belonged to this point in time, wasn't going to be there for this particular battle. That was one of the things that had driven him to create his little time machine in the first place—that he hadn't even been there when Ichigo had died. The closest he got was rewatching the battle from the footage Masha recorded, and that just made him feel powerless. Impotent. He hadn't been there to save her.

Well, this time he would be.

From his hiding place just beyond the field of battle, he could see that the Mews were struggling. This fight had been the first time they'd ever seen one of the aliens in the flesh, and Ryou could tell that it was getting to them. They were off their game, making rookie mistakes in the most dangerous battle they'd ever fought up to this point. Ryou wanted to scream at them to shape up, to be the team he knew they could be, but who knew what would happen if he blew his cover too soon? And besides, he was in cat form, which didn't lend itself to shouting. The wait was torture, but he had to wait until just the right—Now. Kish stood over a prone Ichigo, one sword lifted high above his head.

Ryou pounced, a streak of gray fur flying through the air, and latched his little claws into Kish's head just as the alien was about to deliver the killing blow to Mew Ichigo. Shocked, Kish dropped his sword, freeing up a hand to claw the cat away from his face. Ryou's cat form was fast and agile, but obviously not very strong, and it was the work of a moment for the alien to pry him off and throw him hard into a tree.

However, when the alien turned back to finish Ichigo off, she had already escaped. She called out her attack, and Kish just barely managed to dive to the side and avoid taking the blast full-on. Damn. Ryou would have liked to see the bastard killed for what he would have done to Ichigo. Kish rolled over to his fallen sword as the other Mews readied their attacks, and disappeared just as a rainbow of attack light converged on his position.

Ryou, slumped against the bottom of the tree he'd hit, dragged himself far enough away that the Mews wouldn't immediately find him and indeed, they didn't look too hard. Still, he waited the full ten minutes before returning to human form, just in case. Damn it. It felt like that bastard alien broke one of his ribs. Breathing hurt. But it was worth it, he knew, because he saved Ichigo's life. That was all that mattered.

And... He hadn't really thought this far. In the timeline he remembered, the remaining Mews had rushed back to the Café to tell him the tragic news, and Ryou's current problems were twofold. Firstly, he didn't really remember what he had done after he learned of Ichigo's death, not specifically. The days after her murder all sort of blurred together. Secondly, he'd changed history. Ichigo wasn't dead. That meant that even if he could recall all his movements precisely, it wouldn't do him any good, because the current him would be doing different things, and he didn't want to risk running into his doppelganger. There had been no real way to test his time-travel device before strapping it on himself, so he had no way of knowing what would happen if he came into contact with a past version of himself.

Annoyingly, it looked like his only choice was to stay away from everyone until the point when he left, to better avoid any potential paradoxes. But he needed medical attention, and he trusted his own medical expertise far more than he did the public hospital's. And that meant he needed to get back to the Café, at least for a little bit. He waited until he could turn back into Alto (Damn, it hurt to walk on four legs) and padded back down into his lab, which was blessedly empty. After regaining his human form, Ryou peeled off his shirt and felt up the area more thoroughly. Oh, thank goodness. It felt like it was only bruised.

The lab was dark, but Ryou knew the place backwards and forewards, so there was no point in risking discovery by turning on the light. The Mews had probably all gone home, but his doppelganger and Keiichiro could be anywhere. The blonde felt his way over to the freezer, took out a cold pack, and pressed it to his side. It felt wonderful against his aching ribs, and he held it there as he went to find a bandage.

He was wrapping up his chest when Keiichiro burst into the room and flicked on the lights. Shocked, Ryou dropped the roll of bandages and scrambled uselessly to find a place to hide, but of course he was caught.

"Where have you been, Ryou? And what happened to you?" the taller man asked frantically. "No, never mind that, it's not important." Keiichiro looked more frazzled than Ryou had seen him in a long time—in his timeline, at least. "I—Watch this." Paralyzed by his fear of causing some kind of world-ending paradox, Ryou hadn't even noticed Masha flying behind Keiichiro, but now the brunet plucked the little fuzzball from the air and plugged him into their computer console. Masha's eyes went dim as he uploaded his data onto the main computer.

o()o

They hadn't felt it necessary to give Masha night vision; if the Mews were doing something that required them being out after dark, one of the scientists would always chaperone them, just in case. There was no evidence that their powers worked on muggers. The video was low-quality, almost completely dark with a few wayward shafts of light that just barely delineated the action.

It started abruptly, in the middle of what sounded like a window smashing. Masha must have either been powered down or just not had his camera running when it began. A dark form flew in through the broken window, its tawny eyes flashing as they caught every available bit of light. It raised a sword, which flared silver in the light of a passing car, and plunged it into the outline of the sleeping girl. Her blood welled up like cloudy wine, somehow terribly visible in the darkness, and then the video ended with a jumble of movement as Masha raced back to the Café.

o()o

Ryou was speechless. Destroyed. He had saved her, dammit, but now, once again, he could only helplessly watch a recording over her murder, unable to do a thing to save her.

No, that wasn't true this time. There was absolutely something he could do. Keiichiro asked if he was all right, said something about the necessity of contacting the other Mews, but Ryou was insensible to the other man's words. Too distraught to even attempt to explain what he was doing, the blond punched new coordinates into his time travel device and tried again.

-Zeta-

He had finally done it. Ryou had finally found the perfect universe. After protecting Ichigo—and sometimes the other girls as well—from all their foes' sundry attempts at murder, Tokyo Mew Mew had sent the aliens packing once again, this time without losing a single member. Ryou was finally able to take part in the celebration. And only now had he finally gathered up his courage enough to tell Ichigo how he felt about her.

In his past time jumps, he had discovered that instead of coexisting with the Ryou of the new timeline, he replaced him, so there was no danger in spending time with his friends and the girl he loved. Which meant that if this went well, he would have the rest of his life to enjoy the perfect world he had made. Of course, he would never be able to explain to Ichigo exactly how many times he had saved her life, or how many times he had seen her die (How could you tell someone that you'd watched her be killed almost half a dozen times?), but every time he had changed the timeline, he had made sure to cement his friendship with Ichigo, and in his travels he had come to love her more than ever.

Luck was with him. He caught her in the kitchen, bringing out some more juice for the little party. Her beautiful face looked flushed and bright with excitement, and her eyes sparkled like galaxies—or, at least, that was how Ryou thought of it.

"Ichigo," he called, trying to hide his nervousness. "Can I talk to you for a second?"

"Sure," she replied, setting her armload of drinks down on a counter. "I have the most amazing news!"

"Oh—well, by all means, you go first. This is your night, after all." Ryou's heart felt like it would burst out of his chest, but he had to be gentlemanly. He had been working so hard to cut down on his sarcasm, which he knew bugged Ichigo, and being a smart-ass now would be a terrible move, even if snark was his usual method of coping with stress.

Ichigo grinned hugely. "I'm going to England with Masaya!" Ryou felt his heart crumble in his chest.

"That's great," he said flatly, unable to muster up the will to fake happiness. "I'm sure the two of you will have a great time." He turned from her roughly, afraid that he might actually start to cry, but she put a hand on his shoulder.

"Hey," she said, gently turning him back around. "What's wrong? You're my friend; I thought you'd be happy for me." Could she really be such an idiot? Ryou didn't trust his voice—though he wasn't sure if he was more afraid of it coming out as a sob or a snarl—so he just brushed past her, turning to go down to his lab rather than back to the celebration. Ichigo didn't follow him.

Goddammit! After everything he'd done for her, Ryou was still just her friend. What was wrong with her? What was wrong with him? She deserved her happiness, he knew that. And the sensible part of him knew it was better to have her happy and with Masaya than dead. At least this way he would get to see her.

But as tears began to slip from his eyes (He hadn't even cried at her deaths), he realized that he didn't have to sit idly by and let Masaya take Ichigo away from him, didn't have to get so close to perfect happiness only to have it snatched away yet again. He still had the time travel device after all, and if he could save Ichigo's life, he could certainly fix this. The tears blurred his vision as he fumbled the coordinates into place, and as he left this hateful timeline behind him, the flash of amber light made him feel, apropos of nothing, as though he was looking through Kish's eyes as the alien went in for the kill.

-Iota-

In his haste, Ryou must have gotten the coordinates wrong, because he appeared in the middle of a war zone. The landscape, wherever he was, was torn up from the fighting, and the air was filled with shouts, screams, and blasts of colored light. Something exploded to his left, and Ryou covered his head with his hands and dived to the right... tipping his wheelchair over.

(What the hell?)

He struggled to get the chair upright, a task not aided by the fact that his legs genuinely didn't work. Once he managed that, it was another minute or so before he managed to pull himself back into it, thankful that his upper body was still strong.

"What're you doing here, chief?" Ryou turned his head when he heard the voice ostensibly addressing him; the wheelchair was obviously designed for rough terrain, and it had a little control panel on one arm, but he had neither the knowledge of how to use it nor the time to figure it out. It took Ryou a moment to recognize the speaker. Her familiar costume was on top of what looked like body armor of some kind of shifting, liquid metal, one of her eyes was covered by a black patch, her pale skin was marred by scars, and her bubblegum-pink hair was shorter than he'd ever seen it, no more than a couple inches long.

"Ichigo?" he asked, dumbfounded. Seriously, where the hell was he? This was... Every timeline he'd visited so far had been just like the original, with slight variations. How had he managed to mess up his coordinates badly enough that the timeline had turned into this?

"Did you hit your head, love?" she replied. "Who else would it be?" She peered at him, but all he could do was stare back blankly.

"N-no, I'm fine," he assured her shakily. Apparently seeing Ryou wheelchair-bound wasn't an unusual thing for this strange Ichigo, and since she already suspected him of having a concussion, asking where he was probably wasn't the best plan.

"Not for long. What the hell were you thinking, coming out without telling us? If you died, we'd all be doomed, and I personally wouldn't see the point of fighting for a world that you weren't part of. Let's get you out of here." Ryou nodded, but didn't do anything. What could he do? The controls for the wheelchair looked simple enough, now that he took a serious look at them, but he had no idea where to go. "Geez, are you sure you're okay?"

She actually sounded really worried, and she stared concernedly into his face as she reached across him to the chair's controls. Flipping open a little panel on the arm, she leaned bodily over him and spoke into it. Oh, God. He hadn't been this close to her since before she'd died the first time. How could she not realize what she was doing to him?

"HQ, this is Sierra Bravo. HQ, do you copy?" A crackly voice, indistinguishable through the transmission's static, responded in the affirmative. "HQ, I need you to port the chief outta here. I think he hit his head or something." The voice agreed, and Ichigo finally got off Ryou. The hairs on his arms started to stand on end, and he vanished in a flash of blue light.

o()o

"What happened, Ryou?" Disoriented and a little nauseous—from being what, teleported?—Ryou was in no position to answer as Keiichiro swam into his field of vision.

However, he was glad to see that unlike Ichigo, there were no serious changes to Keiichiro's appearance. The long hair was the same, the dorky bow tie (The Keiichiro he knew had just laughed whenever he made fun of the bow tie) was the same. Keiichiro's face looked older, more worn, but that was to be expected, given the world he was living in. The brunet examined Ryou's head for signs of trauma, then glanced at the rest of his miserable, crippled body. When he saw Ryou's waist, Keiichiro's gray eyes hardened into steel.

"I thought we agreed that we weren't going to use the hopper belt." The tall man's voice was cold and exasperated. "I don't even know how I should feel that you broke it before you got a chance to abandon us." Looking down at his waist, Ryou saw that the belt was, in fact, pretty smashed up. The chair must have crushed it when he fell. Still, why did this version of Keiichiro know what the belt was?

"I don't—I didn't—" Ryou's head felt like it was full of feathers rather than neurons. He could barely string together a coherent thought in this bizarre place, and he obviously wasn't vocally competent. Keiichiro sighed in annoyance.

"Just give it to me." Ryou certainly didn't have it in him to argue, so he just unhooked the smashed belt and handed it over. Keiichiro took it turned away, and after a couple false starts, Ryou figured out how to maneuver his chair well enough to follow the taller man. But when Keiichiro opened the locked cabinet that was presumably where the belt was supposed to be stored, there was already one in there, exactly the twin of the one Ryou had been wearing save that it was in pristine condition. "You're not Ryou."

"I most certainly am," Ryou replied, feeling like his head was being squeezed in a vice. "Not the one from the current timeline, but you have another—what did you call it?—hopper belt! If you give it me, I can go back in time and fix this?" Keiichiro just laughed bitterly.

"That's how you think it works? No wonder you abandoned your reality."

"What are you talking about? I already explained you—I mean, the Keiichiro from the original timeline—how the belt works; I just have to go back and fix whatever got screwed up, and I've got all the time in the world." This almost felt normal. If Ryou closed his eyes and ignored the fact that he couldn't feel anything below his waist, he could almost pretend this was a normal argument with Keiichiro, except that where the Keiichiro he knew was always excited and playful in his arguments, this man was actually angry.

"Time travel doesn't work," Keiichiro half-shouted. "Ryou—I'm sorry, my Ryou, the competent one—understood that. Are you really so behind on your world that you don't even know time travel doesn't work without FTL? What you've been doing—" Keiichiro stabbed a finger toward Ryou, and the blonde couldn't help but notice how much rougher his hands looked, "—is punching holes between dimensions.

"Let's see how simple I can make this, since proper theoretical physics is obviously too much for you: Every time you use that belt, you 'hop' into the body of another dimension's Ryou, but when you leave a world, you take your body with you, so..." Keiichiro smiled grimly as the realization dawned in Ryou's eyes. "Exactly. When you jump out of a world, you effectively erase that universe's Ryou Shirogane from existence. I sincerely hope that any worlds you left can win their wars without you."

Oh, God. What had he done? His original timel—universe would be all right, and so would the last one he had visited; they'd both already dealt with the aliens. But the universes in between, where Ichigo had died despite his best efforts... No. Those Mews were still strong, and those Keiichiros knew what they were doing. They would be fine without him too. He had to believe that.

"Then tell me what I need to know about this universe," he told Keiichiro. "If you're right—and I'm not willing to gamble on you being wrong, even if I'm not overly fond of this version of you—I'm not going to abandon another world. I'm with you."

Keiichiro's eyes softened again at that, and his mocking smile faded into something sadder but more genuine. "I'm sorry I was so hard on you, then. It was a shock—Ryou was my best friend, you know. Will your old universe be all right without you? I know what I must have sounded like."

As Ryou explained how the Mews worked in the other worlds he had visited and how much less dangerous their work was, and Keiichiro explained the particular circumstances of his world—how the aliens had arrived en masse and declared instead of sending a small strike force to besiege the world with monsters—he felt some of his old camaraderie returning. After the initial shock and anger had worn off, this Keiichio wasn't that much different than the Keiichiro he remembered, and though they still had a long way to go, he was relieved that he hadn't lost his best friend after all. Even in this awful place, faced with a more dangerous, more desperate fight, that was comforting.

Ryou was frankly a little surprised to see that none of them had died. Like Ichigo, they all looked quite the worse for wear; he could even see that one of Minto's arms was clearly artificial, and he shuddered to think of how the poor girl had gotten a wound like that. However, he was more surprised when Ichigo came right up to him and perched on the arm of his wheelchair.

"What's the verdict, Doc? Is he gonna be okay?" Keiichiro glanced at Ryou, not sure what to say to Ichigo. Ryou tried to look reassuring.

"Ichigo, I have something to tell you, and it's going to sound completely insane." She just looked at him with her one eye, both eyebrows raised questioningly. "I'm not... I'm not the Ryou you know. I guess the easiest way to say it would be that I'm a version of him from another dimension, and—"

"Is that true?" she asked. The question was directed at Keiichiro, who nodded.

"I'm afraid so."

I'm sorry, Ichigo. I didn't know what I was doing." For a moment, it looked like she was going to cry, but she rubbed her good eye with the heel of her hand and smiled.

"Well, if you're anything like he was, I'm sure we'll get along all right," she replied, kissing him on the cheek.