Silent Guardian

[Kii]

this idea was spawned by one of WarGiver's generated plots, but isnt using EVERYTHING from it.
the basic idea for this fic is that ranma befriends hotaru before her awakening as saturn and early in the Mugen crazyness. he doesnt bother with the senshi and treats hotaru like a little sister and protects her when he can. as the arc continues and hotaru is draged into the senshi fighting (aka: outers attack her.. ill mix anime and manga here) she tells ranma about it. he doesnt know which senshi were which and just blames them for attackign her. then The Delta becomes a crater (end of arc when Mugen Academy is destroyed). ranma hears about it and heads straight there to find everythign gone. he searches for days to find absolutely nothing (because the outers moved away with baby-hotaru). he returns to nerima depressed, blamign himself for not being able to protect her and blamign the senshi because he knows it was their doing. things go bad in nerima because of ranma's mood. eventually he gets the idea to do it all over using the nanban mirror (im takign liberties with it.. makign it bypass the timegates and have it not cause alarms for pluto), and starts workign on a plan. after getting everything he needs to impliment the plan, he runs to juuban and uses the mirror to go back in time to early in the deathbusters arc, well before he meets hotaru. as Sailor Nemesis (he researched a bit and didnt want to take a planet title, just in case, so since he knew he woudl be fightign the senshi.. Nemesis) she infultrates the inners while setting up an identity in juuban so noone will link her to ranma saotome of nerima (who still exists...). when the past-ranma would run across hotaru, nemesis intercepts him and causes the original meeting to not happen wit the past ranma, but with the future ranma meeting her and tryign to repeat what he originally did while tryign to not scare her with how close he was acting.
the arc continues with ranma getting closer to hotaru than before and ranma learning of the outers bloodthirstyness and how the inners wouldn't have done what the hotaru he lost said the seshi did. he stays as part of the inner's group, but never fully reveals himself to them. whenever the outers show up, he's the first to tear into them, causing the canon rift between the inners and outers to widen, with mars becoming more volatile towards the outers as well.
the original plot coudl easilly be derailed by never having pharoh 90 get the chance to break through and saturn never having to awaken.
how's this sound? i think it might be a bit too involved for an epic oneshot, but not enough for a high-chaptercount fic series.
oh.. of course i plan to start the story with Nemesis appearing in the park in juuban while holding the nanban mirror swearing she wouldn't fail this time.

[DCG]

Good idea.
Expect for that paradox right in the middle...
Might wana have nemises play senshi while letting her past self go about exctaly like she did. Then leave with baby hotaru before the outers can get there hands on her.
No paradox and it still leaves you with the outers/inner rift that would be caused by baby hotaru.

[Kii]

well i dont believe in paradoxes for one simple reason. if one COULD happen, it would have and nothign woudl exist. i subscribe to the N-jump timestream theory. basicly...
timetravel forward = just steping outside the flow of time temporarilly
timetravel backwards = old timeline continues without you, new timeline made as an exact copy of the original up to your entry. it woudl take dimentional travel to go back, and you wouldnt have changed anything because its the new timelien you influenced.
also.. can you see ranma sitting by while the not-him stays with hotaru and makes all the same mistakes that let her get killed? plus he woudl have to deal with his past self then... unless i let it sawtooth out from there... each past-ranma thinks hotaru was killed and does the same or similar things.
also, i forgot to mention it, but he intercepts his past self in an attempt to preserve honor while staying with hotaru to protect her. past-ranma continues as if he never met hotaru (which he doesnt), and the timetraveler ranma gets to live as someone besides ranma saotome
basicly, ranma gives up himself for a chance to save his little sister

[Dragon Man]

What would Senshi Ranma do with Baby Hotaru? I doubt he/she can afford a place of his/her own and raise Hotaru at the same time. I would like to see Ranma laying into the trigger happy Outers though!

[WG_Writer]

looks good, you might want to use the idea that the Nanban Mirror follows the rule that it has no actual time travel capibilities, it can only go to alternate universes/dimentions. this follows your theory of time travel, plus the rule that stats "you cannot monitor anything without affecting the results."
I also believe in that rule of time travel, but my belief is that: a) a paradox with time travel is a loop, and b) (many worlds theory) that each possible outcome that can result does result. Meaning a paradox prevents its own continuation at the time of creation, thus it prevents itself from existing within the many worlds theory. So a paradox cannot happen since there is no way to maintain it.
On a side note: this will be, I believe, the third fic that I somehow inspired... So I hope you the best of luck in writting it.

[Kii]

if i let it follwo that cannon path (where saturn awakens to destroy Pharoh 90), then i doubt ranma would try to raise hotaru alone, but woudl be adamnant against trusting the outers. he woudl also refuse to let the nerima chaos in. so that leaves trusting the inners and their families.
or i can diverge it, disruptign the anime plot so mistress 9 never gets the power to open the gate.. or even disrupt mistress 9 from ever emerging... but doubt that'll happen
also.. who's to say ranma doesnt have the money? he left his home.. why couldn't he have taken a loan out from nabiki just to spite her in some way? hell, i was thinkign maybe nabiki taught him how to set this up, plannign to sell the information later and track the mistakes she knew he woudl make.
and warg... no such thing as a time-loop with the theory i follow. if, say you go back in time to set into motion incidents that leads your counterpart to go back in time from when you did to when you did, exactly as you did, it wouldn't be a loop, but a sawtooth...
|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\| <--- like that |s represent timelines and \ represent travel backwards
example.. that Halftime fic (ranma/c-trig) where cologne went back and gave herself a scroll with hints of the future woudl be a perfect example of this. who's to say they never originally suceeded? and thatthe scroll wasn't an attempt to repair the mistakes? cologne was never given the code for the epoch in the story.. so how did she get it originally? ^^ the start of the sawtooth. eventually it must fluctuate down to the same actions over and over, creating infinite mirrored timelines.... oh hell... lucca's gonna have a ball when she detects that many recieving portals... hey.. maybe thats the basis of Crono Breaks's idea?travelign to all the dead-worlds?
ANYWAY... sorry.. got sidetracked and... "you cant monitor anything without changing the results? you talkign about quantum theory? Shrodinger's Cat? that kinda stuff?
nasicly, any timetravel affects the future ala chaos theory. even if you go back into the middle of an empty field and noone sees you, your presence still affects and if you go back, you may not be in the same world you know. depending on the distance back you went, the greater the chance of change. butterfly causes hurricanes.. that kinda thing

[migele]

A Paradox is something that removes parts of reality because of it. WSo a paradox resolves itself.
Two identical people in the same space could cause a paradox, but identical leaves a lot for theoracing.

[Kii]

ok. i do admit my idea of nemesis chasing past-ranma off... anyone have a better idea? obviously it will have to avoid the main people of nerima, otherwise nabiki will get wind of it and may suspect something.
im also not set on when the ranma-divergence happens. ive already got a post-cannon, a pre-cannon, so im thinkign of diverging this somewhere between. maybe before he meets his mother? that gives an option later to have nodoka separated from the nerima group and posibly help raise hotaru weather or not she gets turned back into a baby.

[Dragon Man]

Having Nodoka help raise Hotaru is a great idea, she might not be a true grandchild but Nodoka would know how to take care of her. And Ranma would keep his mother from putting to many crazy ideas in Hotaru's head. So I agree with the pre Nodoka introduction in the manga.

[Kii]

GAH!!! i just realized something! theres no cannon explination as to HOW nodoka found them... what if i use the cliche that nodoka lives in/near juuban. ranma and hotaru stumbled across her one day and hotaru has an attack. nodoka offers them some help and they then find out she's ranma's mother.
original timeline, ranma intorduced nodoka to nerima and the Ranko act never happened because genma wasn't there to interfere. ranma still spent alot of time with his mother.
new timeline, ranma meets nodoka early as Nemesis with a message, or just leaves a message, informing her that Genma and Ranma are living at the Tendos :3 this coudl basicly make the ORIGINAL timelien the divergence and the new timeline almost-canon.
sound good?

[Dragon Man]

That's genius! excellent way of explaining how Nodoka knew to come to Nerima. But I think the idea was she came looking for Soun since she knew he was Genma's friend and might have a clue about where he was. It just so happened that Ranma and Genma had reached the Tendo house and been living there for a while.

[Kii]

you forgot she sent a postcard before coming? adressed to genma? saying "I've finally foudn you!"

[Dragon Man]

I did forget, my bad. I thought Genma just saw her coming a long way off and ran to grab Ranma.

[Zwzn]

You could always just ignore the paradoxes.
Maybe even have Pluto trying to find the the time traveler.

[crystlshake]

You could also have the reason why the gate cant track the mirror is because its made from the same material or something along those lines. Perhaps some kind of joint interface.