Synopsis: Zelda Yume hated her normal life, and wished for something more than a life of boredom from day one, so when her little brother accidentally sends her back to the feudal era, she jumps at the chance to have an adventure--even if it means becoming a man to do it! However, when along the way she meets Asahi, a boy with less than normal qualities and a heart of stone, she learns that looks can be deceiving, and that beauty is in the eye of the beholder...

Xandra: I'm proud of myself, I'm stepping out of my natural section of the genre to write an adventure! This is an anime/manga story, and like everything else I do, it's got magic, violence, fighting, adventures and (dun-dun-DAAAAH) romance, as well as my eternal underlying points about life as a whole. (If you're a Slayers, Rurouni Kenshin or Inuyasha fan, you might like this!) This will probably be a long story, but please, bear with me and read it! PLEASE! ;_; Well, if you're reading it, enjoy, and review if you can! I love reviews. On to my newest inspiration!

Warnings: Extended period of logical 'spewing', mild adult language.

(Oh, and PS: Tabidatsu is roughly Japanese for 'beginning a journey,' if you were wondering.)

//thoughts//

EMPHASIS/ WRITTEN TEXT

*MORE EMPHASIS*

/'Quote or statement recalled by a character'/

**elapsed time**

~POV change to someone else

****

Tabidatsu: Quest for the Greatest Treasure

By Xandra

Prologue: It's My New Invention

****

Zelda Yume was no ordinary girl in many respects. Unlike most girls her age, her grades weren't perfect, though not bad either, and she tended to wear a man's uniform to school to avoid that damn skirt and ascot sailor look. She hated the color pink, the thought of wearing a dress and the immortalized dream of her late mother for her to become a simple housewife. No, Zelda had other ideas. She wanted to be a warrior.

In fact, that was what Zelda meant--warrior woman. Her mother had been into the whole name thing.

She and her family owned an old-style dojo, left to them by her great grandfather, dating back to the feudal era, and this was where she spent her time. Unlike most teenage girls, who liked to go out with their friends and go shopping or try on clothes while they giggled about guys, Zelda spent her free-time training. No, it wasn't because of her family--quite the contrary, her father didn't WANT her to fight at all--but because she loved the exhilaration she felt when she practiced and trained with her great grandfather's ancient battle sword.

That, and no one in school could possibly match her in most anything physical, not even any of the boys.

Every day as she practiced and fought imaginary enemies, the teenage girl dreamt of adventures and great quests that she would've loved to embark on, had she been born in the right era. As she stabbed and parried in the air with the straight-bladed English sword, with its gold-plated hilt set with a little metallic red plate in the end of the handle and engraved in an ancient language, she dreamt of being a crusader, a fighter in ancient times. She dreamt of the great quests she could see so clearly in her mind, battling demons and evil sorcerers for a one of a kind treasure, in the name of honor and love with a cunning and beautiful man as her partner. It was just about the only thing she could think about, and she spent hours daydreaming and pretending despite her age.

It was too bad that nowadays there was no such thing as an adventure. Back in ancient Japan, back before her great grandfather had built the dojo to teach fighting and swordsmanship to the masses, there had been monsters to fight, things to discover, places to go and new people to meet, but now, everything was so...blah! The closest she ever came to an adventure was entering her older brother Akira's bedroom for laundry (because you never did know what was going to jump out at you in that sty--his socks tended to crawl away and his pants could walk THEMSELVES to the laundry room).

Ah well, at least she had the dojo to play around in. It wasn't like she had many friends, after all--and the thought of a boyfriend was even MORE laughable--only a hyper preppy named Zinnia who refused to leave her alone.

Oh, and a stalker, too, named Yukio, but she hated him. He was a rich boy that liked to pop up every once in a while and follow her around, asking her insanely if she would marry him. It wasn't because he thought she was pretty...it was because he wanted the dojo, or more correctly, the rights to the land it sat on--that much was common knowledge. Her father had even threatened to have him arrested for harassing her so often, but Yukio had just responded quite politely that he could pay his own bail as many times as was necessary until her dad gave up. The boy was almost unstoppable, with one exception--he was afraid of Akira, and with good right. Her brother was a stupid slob, but he was a BIG stupid slob with a LOT of muscle and zero tolerance for nosy boys picking on her.

Even now, Yukio was lurking nearby, and try as she may to ignore his constant chattering through the open screen door of the old-style dojo, he was still there nonetheless.

"PLEASE, Zelda, you MUST give me a chance," he pleaded, pitifully.

She paused in mid-swing, holding the blade of the ancient sword in the air before her, eyeing him through the corner of her eye. "Beat it, Yukio, or I'll tell my Dad you're here again and he'll get you put away for harassment of a minor."

Yukio was twenty while she was seventeen, which meant that, legally, if he touched her in any way he would get shipped off to the nearest prison for child molestation. She couldn't use Akira to get rid of him now, because he was out playing basketball at the wreck center across town and wasn't due back for at least another half an hour. Unfortunately, nothing scared him EXCEPT Akira. "But I'm simply sitting here, enjoying the splendor that is you."

"The splendor that is the LAND you want to exploit, you mean," she spat, turning her head to leer at him.

He chuckled, lightly, and she realized once again with a scowl just how good looking he was. With his pale skin, thin, lithe body, short dark hair, deep blue eyes and MONEY up the WAZOO, he was the dream of any teenage girl- -except Zelda. He was too fake for her. Besides, he didn't like her because of who she was, he liked her because of what she would inherit when she graduated high school in a few days. That was why she disliked him so much-- none of the boys at school liked her at all, but at least they were honest about how they felt. "Oh, but Zelda, you KNOW I love YOU." He sighed, dreamily, leaning against the floor with a smile. "Oh, they'll be so beautiful, you know."

She sighed, scowling. //I know I'm gonna regret this,// she thought. "Who."

"Our CHILDREN, of course."

//I knew it.//

"They'll have my blue eyes, and your lovely copper hair...and my beauty, of course, but hopefully your will-power," he paused and beamed, "because we all know how stubborn you are, beloved."

"Don't CALL me that!" she growled, shutting her eyes and tightening her grip on the hilt of the sword. Turning slowly on her toes, she pointed it at him from where she stood in the center of the wooden floor, scowling cruelly. "I am holding a VERY dangerous weapon in my hands that has slaughtered a myriad of monsters as vast as the amount of cash you have in your bank account, and YOU are trespassing, so if I KILL you, it's not illegal--it's self-defense."

"Temper, temper," he sighed, shaking his head with a smile. He stood and stepped up into the room with her from outside, then pulled the screen closed behind him. "If you won't let me marry you, at least allow me to escort you to your prom this Friday night. I can prove to you that I care, I really can."

She scowled, then sheathed the sword at her hip and strode to the other side of the room, where its case was located. Setting it on its hangings, she locked it up, pausing momentarily to stare into the Dragon's Plate (that was what her father called the red plate imbedded in the handle, because it was said to be a real scale from a dragon's hide). After the customary moment of silent reflection, she turned and walked back to him, blocking his hand as it came up to catch her arm, scowling up at him. "You have until the count of three to get outta here or I'm gonna have to hurt you."

"But Zelda--"

"No buts," she spat, "GET. OUT. NOW."

With an overacted sigh, Yukio nodded, smiling winningly. "Very well, my dear Zelda, but I will be back later tonight to see you. You must understand that my intentions are pure, and you should feel privileged by the fact that someone such as myself wants you for his bride." He paused, then smirked, haughtily, "After all, who WOULDN'T want a man like me?"

"I sure as hell don't!" she shouted, harshly, grabbing the screen and pulling it back. With a heave, she shoved him out of the dojo and onto the grass outside. "BEAT IT or *I* will beat *YOU* back to the feudal era!" She slid the screen shut with a loud CLACK, then turned and headed from the dojo. Hopefully he would get the hint this time and go away.

Zelda quickly changed out of her gi and back into her baggy jeans and T- shirt, then took her hair down out of the ponytail it had been in and paused before the mirror to inspect herself. She was by no far stretch of the imagination an ugly girl, but she wasn't remarkable either, which was probably why she had decided at a young age to be a tomboy. Until puberty, she had been mistaken for a boy most of the time, and even now people had difficulty, because she wore men's clothes and didn't bother wearing makeup or dresses or anything, because people had teased her for trying to be feminine in junior high. Between being called ugly by little boys in first grade and being completely ignored by them NOW unless she was bench- pressing in P. E. or offering to do homework, her very weak feminine side had taken a hike and become almost nonexistent.

The only people that told her she was pretty were her friend Zinnia (because she was like that) and her father (who was SUPPOSED to do that because he was her father), so she didn't bother trying to be for people who didn't care. That added to the fact that her mother had died after giving birth to her younger brother, Kenji, was why she was so unfeminine. It was said that low self-esteem was born from situations like hers, and it was probably true--except for the one fact that made her different from all the 'others' that were like her. She didn't CARE enough to feel bad about the way she looked.

With a sigh, she tied her unruly copper curls back into a ponytail again and tucked a stray bang behind her left ear, then left the changing room and ventured into the house from the dojo--only to ram right into the white- clad chest of her father. He blinked, then looked up at the green eyed, brunette man standing there, smirking at her. "Oops, sorry, Dad."

"S'okay, princess," he said, cheerfully, beaming down at her. She smiled back. It was good to see Dad smile--it was such a rare thing. He worked as a rep for a big-time accounting company that worked him like a dog and sent him all across the globe, and that added to the fact that he was a single parent with two amazingly unaverage sons and an antisocial daughter stressed him out a lot. Still, somehow, he managed to keep an optimistic outlook on things. "Happy birthday. You excited about being seventeen, honey?"

Zelda shrugged. A birthday was nothing special, just another marker that she was getting older and would soon have to deal with Yukio on her own. Still, she smiled for her father, because she knew it made him happy to see her smile. "I guess so."

"You guess?" he repeated. She shrugged again and he sighed, smiling weakly. "You should be happier about a birthday. You can always think of it Kenji's way--you get presents and special treatment."

"Yeah, well, Kenji's a freak of nature."

"Zelda, that isn't nice."

She shrugged again and he sighed, shaking his head with an odd smile. It was then that she realized he was standing with his hands behind his back. Raising an eyebrow, she smirked. "Dad, what are you holding."

"Oh, ME?"

"Dad."

"Okay, okay, I got you something." He brought his hands from behind his back and proffered a small, black backpack with little silver buckles on it, which she accepted with a curious blink. "It's supposed to be trendy, and I know you don't like girlie stuff, but I thought maybe some of the stuff in there might be kinda cool."

Zelda gave her father a disbelieving look, then, slowly, opened the little backpack and looked inside. //He has to be kidding.// Sitting in the little backpack was a one-time use camera, a pair of purple tinted sunglasses, a scarf, a few different kinds of makeup and a portable CD player--which was hers. There were a bunch of other things, but nothing really useful. "Uh..."

"You're walkman was in my car--you dropped it yesterday on the way to school and I thought you'd want it back--but I got you a few CDs. As for the makeup, well..." he blushed, slightly, chuckling, "The saleswoman said it was a popular thing with girls. I'm sorry, princess, I couldn't think of anything else."

Zelda smiled despite the fact that she was both exasperated and embarrassed by this cheesy gift. He was trying, but unfortunately, he was no Mom. Ah well, she'd fake it. Hugging him, she threw the awkward little thing over her shoulder. "Thanks, Dad."

He smiled, blinking. "You like it?"

"Yeah," she lied. Well, at least Zinnia would like it. She was into makeup and tacky accessories.

He opened his mouth to comment further, but, before a word so much as passed from his lips, a familiar ringing broke the silence between them and she sighed. He shrugged, shaking his head as he produced his cell-phone from the pocket of his jeans and clicked it on. "Saffron Yume...oh, good afternoon, sir--" he frowned, pointing at the phone with a half-shrug, and she got the picture. It was his boss again, and that meant it was time for all good little children to take a hike.

Offering him one last faked smile, Zelda headed off into the hallway leading to her bedroom, passing her little brother's lab on the way. From inside, she could hear the usual banging of his chemical concoctions and rattling of his inventions, but a foreign sound accompanied it, like the revving of an engine and the crackling of electricity. She paused, sighing again. //Oh please, tell me Kenji didn't hot-wire Dad's car again to power his hover-craft.//

Her twelve-year-old little brother, Kenji, was a child prodigy, a clinical genius--the exact opposite of Akira, who was twenty-one, still lived at home and had the IQ of a molding cucumber--and he was constantly experimenting on anything he could get his hands on in the lab Dad had given him. (Once again, he was one of Mom's meaningful names, because Kenji meant intelligent second son, which was what he was to the fullest extent possible.) Once he had even reversed the polarity of the atoms in their cat's fur to negative and stuck it to the ceiling with static electricity, and it had taken them a week to scrape him off it. Had he gotten in trouble? No, he'd gotten a confused congrats from their father, who had no idea how Kenji had done it but was proud anyway. This was a constant thing. Zinnia thought it was cute that he was so smart, but Zelda found it flat- out annoying--especially when SHE ended up cleaning up the destruction he caused.

She peeked into his lab and smirked at the sight, rolling her eyes as the platinum-haired kid continued his task of messing with the motor of their ride-on lawn-mower, sending sparks everywhere and making little gears on a panel next to him flip out. "Kenji, what are you doing, you little doofus?"

The revving stopped and he looked up at her, and she couldn't help but laugh. He was wearing a pair of magnifying goggles he had constructed from a bunch of magnifying glasses of different sizes, and they made his normally wide, brown eyes look like those of a bug, GIGANTIC. To add MORE humor to his outlook, he was wearing a helmet of his own design that looked like a pasta strainer with a telephone and a bunch of other junk tied down with wire. It was his version of a hands-free phone, and it worked, but it looked dumber than anything Zelda had ever seen in her life. As a whole, with his little gold spider bangs hanging out over his giant bug eyes, he was hysterical. He scowled. "What's so funny?"

"You look like a Martian!" she gasped, trying to contain herself.

He scoffed, then turned back to what he was doing, shouting across the room at someone. "AKIRA HURRY UP YOU BIG DUMMY!"

Zelda frowned, then peeked into the room, and lo and behold, there was Akira, sitting on top of what looked like a steel door-frame with light- bulbs sticking out of the sides, standing right in the middle of the room. He was attaching wires into an electro-sphere on the top that were wrapped tightly around the frame, trailing to connect into the motor that Kenji was playing with. What was he doing home, and why was he in HERE and not OUTSIDE beating Yukio into a gooey pulp? "Akira, I thought you were playing basketball up at the Center today!" she exclaimed.

"KYA!" Her golden-haired older brother jumped, then wobbled atop the frame, windmilling his arms with an alarmed cry before regaining his balance by clinging to it. It was a sad sight, seeing a man that was over six and a half feet tall and two hundred pounds squealing like a little girl and clinging to a door-frame like a scared cat. Akira meant bright boy-- needless to say, he had been SERIOUSLY misnamed. "WHEW!"

Kenji smacked a hand to his forehead. "Geez, THIS is my big brother?"

Panting a few times, Akira looked over at her, smiling densely. He was stupid, but at least he was lovable. "Oh, hi-ya, Baby Sis. I WAS playing ball, but Kenji called me on that bowl-hat of his and said he needed my help."

"It's a hands-free telephone helmet, dingus!" Kenji shrieked, stomping his foot angrily. Zelda smirked and he sighed. "Man, either my gene pool is shallow or it has a leak in it."

Zelda shook her head. "Nope, it just wasn't mixed well enough, which is why Akira got the looks, you got the brains and I got the fighting spirit and strength."

"Nah, that's just Dad's family curse," Akira laughed. Zelda smiled herself. Dad had a story about a supposed 'curse' on his family, saying that if three kids were born under the name, their traits would be split roughly down the middle. That was their excuse, every kid got one ruling trait and nothing else, and it made sense. It explained why Akira was beautiful, Kenji was a genius and she could whoop anyone around. Then again, it seemed that the curse (if it were real at all) had been diluted over the generations, because Akira was strong and cute, Kenji was cute and smart, and Zelda was smart and strong.

Kenji rolled his eyes, then took off his phone-helmet and set it aside on his workbench. "Let's try again, bro. When I say, touch the wires together."

"Yeah, I remember...wait, which ones?"

"The ones in your hands, Akira."

"Oh yeah."

Zelda quickly gave the wired doorway a once-over, then blinked. Metal plus electricity plus AKIRA would equal what? Well, she was no mathematician, but it LOOKED dangerous. "Kenji, won't that--?"

"No, he's wearing rubber pants. He won't get electrocuted too hard."

"But he's playing with those wires bare-handed."

"That's the point! He's too dense for it to hurt him, but it's not too big a shock. I have to know if it has power SOMEHOW, and Akira's the only guy I know who'd actually do it."

//That's because he failed eighth grade science,// she thought. Well, no avoiding it now.

Kenji handed her a pair of protective goggles, which she hastily strapped on, then grabbed a pair of pliers and a screwdriver. He hastily twisted a few screws into place, then messed with a couple wires. "Okay, hit it."

Zelda watched as Akira touched the wires together, ready and willing to bolt for the phone in order to call the nearest hospital if her brother killed himself, but nothing happened. She sighed with relief. Another of Kenji's inventions that didn't work. Hallelujah!

"No go, Ken," Akira called. "No spark."

Kenji growled. "MAN! WHAT am I doing WRONG here?! It SHOULD work!"

"What IS it," Zelda asked, "It looks like a door-frame with light-bulbs on the sides wrapped in wires topped with a light-ball thingy like the ones they have at the science museum and the ones they sell at the mall."

"That's what *I* said," Akira murmured.

She laughed, but Kenji didn't think it was funny. He scowled, scoffing. "It's my new invention, and prototypes never look pretty. You ever see the first light-bulb? It was pretty much a wire in a bottle!"

"What's your point?"

"Proto-what?" Akira interrupted.

Kenji sighed, smacking a hand to his forehead. "A model, Akira, a model for a new kind of thing that's still being tested."

"Oh." He paused, frowning. "I knew that."

"Yeah, sure," Kenji sighed. He turned his attention back to Zelda. "It's a time-portal."

She stared at him, her mouth falling open. At first, she thought it was a joke, but then she realized just how serious he looked. He wasn't kidding. "You've finally gone insane, haven't you?"

"WHAT?! YOU DON'T BELIEVE ME?!"

"All that intelligence has overloaded your poor little mind!" she exclaimed. "Kenji, it's been proven that there is no way to travel through time, and I'm DAMN sure no twelve-year-old is going to prove scientists from across the world wrong with a light-up door-frame and a lawn-mower engine!"

Kenji scowled. "How would YOU know?! Just because everybody else is too dumb to see how easy it is doesn't mean it can't be done! I just have to work the kinks out and it'll work for real, I KNOW it!"

Zelda sighed, shaking her head, then looked at him. "Okay, genius, explain to me how it would work."

He nodded, then ducked under his bench and returned with a globe, which he presented to her. He gave it a spin, pulling his goggles up and setting them on his forehead. "Okay, here's my theory. It's been proven that the Earth spins clockwise on an axis at about a thousand miles an hour, and time passes with every rotation, but my thought is, if you can get something to move in the opposite direction--counterclockwise--at a speed faster than it turns, they'll go back in time."

"Why do you think that?"

"The national dateline. If you cross over it going counterclockwise around the earth in a plane at a high speed, you gain a day, or go back to the prior one, but people have never gone very far back in time because they never notice that they do it. See, the only time people cross it is when they're going somewhere on a trip or something, and they usually don't end up back home on the same day, or even the same week, so they don't seem to lose any time at all. If they were somehow able to get back to where they started after crossing it, they'd probably run right into themselves, but since people can't move that fast, they never notice!"

Zelda blinked. "You've lost me."

Kenji nodded. "Not surprising, it's complex. You see, when dealing with time-travel, there's something called the rule of three. According to it, there's three of every person, technically--the past, present and future-- and when you travel through time, if you don't go far enough or if you go too far, you run right into the you that would be there normally in their own time. For example, let's say I sent you back in time right now to a few minutes ago, back to when I told Akira to touch the wires. To you, you'd come out of the portal and see yourself talking to me--that would be the first you, the past one, and you'd be the second--but you wouldn't get to see the third one. Only Akira and I would. You see, when you'd go through, the third you would come out, having come BACK from watching yourself. In other words, right now you're number one, and if I sent you through to go back and watch yourself, you'd be number two, and if you came back, you'd be number three. Past, present and future. However, you wouldn't see a difference at all in your own changing position, being that you'd be doing it yourself and so would the other three--"

"HOLD ON!" Zelda exclaimed, stopping him. "I'm confused already! Just quit."

He nodded. "Right, got it. It's the theory of paradox--if you run into yourself in another time and accidentally alter it, it can create a paradox, or an occurrence that negates what happened. Just by telling you this, I may have made one. See, if I could get the portal to work and I hadn't said anything, just sent you through, you would have gone through the whole process, but since I told you, even if I made it work, you wouldn't want to go because you're confused and angry. I may have created a paradox."

She sighed. Having a genius for a brother was confusing. "Okay, okay, the paradox thing, I get it, sort of. So, you were saying about the dateline and the spinning of the Earth."

"Okay, the dateline. Like I said, if someone could move counterclockwise around the Earth at a fast enough speed, they could go back in time, but the problem is, people move too slow and nothing anybody's invented yet can change that. That, my dear sister, is where light comes in."

"Light."

"Yes, light. Light travels at approximately one-hundred eighty-six thousand miles per second, and nothing BUT light can travel that fast, but if there were a way to somehow condense light into some kind of tangible form and use it as...well, that's even more complicated than the rule of three, so I'll skip it. Think of it this way: if you could somehow wrap yourself in light and let it go, it could take you whichever direction you want it to just as fast as it usually goes. If we could harness the power of the speed of light, you could travel roughly eleven-million, one-hundred sixty thousand miles in a MINUTE, and if you could travel around the earth counterclockwise at that speed, in under a minute, you'd be all the way back to the Dark Ages." He paused and grabbed a piece of paper and a pencil, then began jotting down calculations. "Let me see, it takes 24 hours...okay, Zelda, here's a neat fact: the Earth spins at about four hundred miles a minute, and that compared to the number of miles you could go at the speed of light...it's about twenty-seven thousand nine hundred times faster than the planet turns. So, that, compared to the hours in a day and the days in a year, divided by..."

Zelda sighed, exasperated. //MAN, if only he were dumb enough to do my math homework for me!//

Suddenly, Akira interrupted. "I heard something fall!" he exclaimed.

"Nothing fell, Akira."

"I thought I heard something...oh well. Ken, can I get down now?"

"No, I'm not done with you," Kenji said, tossing the scribbled calculations aside. He pulled his goggles down over his eyes again and checked his motor again, then paused and pulled them up again. "Huh, no power? THAT doesn't make any SENSE!"

"Did you turn it on?" Akira asked.

The boy paused, then smacked a hand to his forehead. "Oh duh!" He grabbed a little box with a large black cable running from it, through the engine and into the wall, then flipped the gray switch on top. There was a loud crack, and suddenly, the motor kicked into life with a sputtering clank. "NOW try it!"

Zelda pulled her goggles back on, and her brother followed suit. //Funny, and all Aki has is rubber pants,// she thought, snidely. //Well, maybe Dad'll finally ground Kenji if he kills him.//

With a shrug, Akira set the wires together--and gasped, jumping. The lights around the door-frame lit up and the electro-sphere began buzzing, the rotating, pink electrical currents surging across the steel ball inside like bolts of lightning. Unfortunately, their older brother lit up too, but only for a moment, because the wires dropped from his hands.

"Oh my God," Zelda gasped, "Akira, are you okay?!"

After a long moment of silence, during which the beautiful dolt blinked several times, very slowly, he murmured faintly to himself. "Wow, that hurt."

"YES!" Kenji exclaimed. He flipped off the power. "Connect those wires and get down here so I can get it going and test it!"

Zelda was tempted to argue with her brother and tell him that it wouldn't work, but somehow, after all of that logical information he had so kindly regurgitated for her, she wasn't quite sure she even had an argument to say it COULDN'T work. God knew, Kenji was smart enough to do something like that. He was a hacker, an inventor and a genius, so why not?

Cautiously, Akira took the wires back into his hands, then connected the little copper fibers together by twisting them around each other and set them aside. Then, he jumped down and stumbled, weavingly, to where Zelda and Kenji stood. "All set," he choked in a lilting voice.

His little sister patted his shoulder. He was stupid, but his heart was in the right place...too bad Kenji used him as a dupe for most of his experimenting. Well, at least he hadn't dissected him yet, but that was only because he wasn't signed up for Biology at the community college until next semester.

"Okay," Kenji said, taking off his magnifying goggles and dropping them on the counter. He tweaked a few things on the motor, then scurried to his doorway and checked some more things. "Yup, it looks ready, but only one way to test it. Have to send something in."

"How can you calibrate what year or time it comes out in?" Zelda asked.

"By simply calculating how much light it would take to shove something as far as a few centuries back. The more time, the more light it would take. Then again, one particle of light can carry about five tons for its whole trip in a second, as far as I can tell, so it wouldn't take more than all these lights to send anybody anywhere. It's complicated, but I'm sure it works." He snapped his fingers. "Akira, get in the top drawer of my bench and get the thing that looks like a box with a clock on it."

Akira did as instructed, and Zelda recognized it instantly. It was another of Kenji's inventions, a recording device that kept track of how long it was running. They made them, but not to this extent. He tossed it to his little brother.

"Good, now grab the power box, Zelda, and flip the black switch."

She grabbed it, watching through the corner of her eye as Kenji set the thing to record. There were three switches, a gray, a black and a red. He'd flipped the gray before. "Black one?"

"Black one. Now."

With a nod, she flipped it, then watched with Akira as the electro-sphere and lights all lit up and the motor exploded into life.

"Now the red one!" Kenji called over the noise.

She flipped it. Suddenly, the empty doorway filled with golden light, almost like something from a sci-fi movie, and she watched as Kenji stepped back a few paces, holding his device up.

"Okay, it's set now to send something about two minutes into the past, with enough oomph that it will land right here. If this works right, we should find it somewhere in the room after I throw it through with about two minutes on it and all our voices!" He clicked the button, then pitched it through.

And that was it. The light in the door seemed to envelope it in a blink of an eye, and then, just like that, the light was gone and the machine shut down.

There was silence, and Kenji slowly circled to the other side of the door- frame, only to kneel down behind it with a little box sitting in front of him. "Oh God, it worked."

"What?" Zelda and Akira quickly went to their little brother, and sure enough, there was his device, and the counter said two minutes and three seconds had passed. "No way, you set that ahead yourself."

"Then why is it right behind the door and not against the wall?" Kenji returned, sharply. "I threw it hard enough that if I had just pitched it though an empty doorway, it would have hit the wall, but it didn't." He paused, then hit the rewind button and played back what it had recorded.

There was static at first, and then, a thunk, followed by an exclamation that made Zelda's heart stop.

"#I heard something fall!#"

"Hey, that's ME!" Akira exclaimed, gawking. "Whoa! That's creepy!"

The recording continued. "#Nothing fell, Akira.#"

"#I thought I heard something...oh well. Ken, can I get down now?#"

Kenji stopped the tape and grinned. "This was in the drawer about two minutes ago, but it was also back here at the same time. It arrived right as I finished trying to explain the time-travel principle to you, and Akira was the only one to hear it because I was talking and he was over here."

"If that was a trick, Zelda, it was a damn good one!" Akira exclaimed. "I looked back there! When I got up there before you showed up, there was nothing there! But I heard it land! I HEARD it and Kenji hasn't been over here since before I got up!"

It was mind-boggling. Her twelve-year-old brother had created a real time- portal. It was impossible, and yet, here was the proof. "That rule of three thing," she murmured. "The first one is in the drawer in the past, waiting to be thrown, the second one is sitting behind the door in the present back then, waiting to be found and this one is the third one, the one in the future...with us."

"Exactly!" Kenji exclaimed. "You got it, and me, I'M gonna win a Nobel Peace Prize!" He jumped to his feet and danced across the room, laughing insanely and spinning around with his recorder in hand. "Heck, I'm gonna win ALL the prizes! I'm great! I really did it! I cheated fate and found out how to time-travel! YEAH!"

"Good job, Ken," Akira said. "I really didn't think it would work!"

"Neither did I," Zelda murmured.

Kenji quickly fell to his notes again, scribbling insanely and murmuring to himself. "Okay, so if I multiply the rate of rotation times the speed and the distance, THEN multiply THAT times the distance of a day and multiply it to the year..." He paused, then began messing with his panel of knobs, then typed in a few figures and laughed. "HA! I could send somebody back to the time of the DINOSAURS!"

"Let me see!" Akira exclaimed, rushing to join the smaller boy, who began pointing out dials and gears to his brother. He looked confused, but excited all the same.

Zelda smiled, slightly, then turned to the empty door-frame and carefully stepped through it to make sure it was off. Yup, nothing happened. //God, I can't believe Kenji really did it,// she thought, running a finger along the inner frame of the door. //It's amazing...too bad I can't use it to go see Mom before she died...that would be cool.// She smirked to herself, suddenly. //Or I could even go back and stop Yukio from being born. Wow, what a blessing THAT would be!//

Then, out of no where, a familiar revving sound caught her ear, and that feeling that you get when you know you're going to regret something later hit her like a train as light surrounded her, and a flat-voiced, dull- sounding, "Oops," alerted her to what had happened. Akira had turned it on-- and she was in BIIIIIG trouble.

The air around her compressed and ripped, and it was suddenly like being on a roller coaster that was going WAY too fast, and before she knew what was happening, all she could see was light, and she thought one thing. //I hope there weren't any dinosaurs in Japan!//

~

"AKIRA!" Kenji shrieked, gawking in horror as his sister disappeared from the portal. With his brother on his heels, he bolted to the doorway to look around for any sign of her, and unfortunately, there was none. "You SENT our sister back in time FIVE POINT SIX *BILLION* YEARS!!!"

"I didn't mean to! How was I supposed to know the controls were right there?!"

Kenji growled and fisted handfuls of his shaggy hair, then got up and quickly went back to the workbench, where he quickly inspected the console. //Okay, okay, calm down. Let's see...if I set it for this speed at this many years...// he checked his notes, then compared them to the dials...and paused. //Wha? Oh...crap.// "Akira, come over here!"

His brother quickly lumbered over and looked down at him. "What?"

"I...I set the time wrong."

"So she's not with dinosaurs now?"

"No, it...it looks like when I meant to hit a decimal, I accidentally hit a comma instead." Akira gave him a blank look, signifying that he didn't get it (as usual), so Kenji decided to simplify it. "Instead of putting in five billion, six hundred million years into the past, I sent her back five- hundred sixty years...so she's not in prehistoric times...she's in the medieval times, the feudal era."

"Oh, THAT'S a lot better," Akira sighed. "She's still gone."

"Yeah, but now she won't get eaten by a dinosaur. At least in ancient Japan she has a chance to survive." Kenji sighed, then quickly started into his calculations. "Okay, to bring her back, we have to find a way to bring her clockwise instead of counterclockwise at the speed of light in this direction. Now, it's possible, but--"

"Uh, Kenji."

"WHAT, Akira?!"

"...How are you gonna bring her back if she doesn't have a portal to cross through?"

He froze, and the pencil fell from his grasp. "Uh-oh. I...I don't think I can, not without another portal and a way to get it to her, at exactly the same place and roughly the same time in order to bring her back, and I'd have to have one there and here and people working both sides."

"In...other words..." Akira said, slowly, leaning down and placing a hand flat on the workbench, a worried but angry look on his face, "...you can't get her back."

Kenji slowly swallowed. "I...I don't know...I don't think I can..."

"So Zelda's stuck in the feudal era of Japan all by herself," Akira asked, harshly. He nodded, regretfully, and his older brother growled, closing his eyes. "I hope she'll be okay."

//Thank God she can fight better than any guy I know,// Kenji thought. Clutching the power-box in his hand, he closed his eyes a moment. //Hang on, Sis, I'll get you back--I'll fix this...I just don't know how long it will take...//

"What's Dad gonna say when we tell him that we kicked Zelda into another era?" Akira asked, weakly.

Kenji scoffed, grabbing his brother's collar and pulling him down to eye- level. "Stupid, we're not GOING to tell Dad! He'll flip out and have a panic attack, and I'm a scientist, not a DOCTOR!" He paused, sighing. "I'll...I'll figure it out, but until then, we have to hide Zelda's absence."

"And HOW are we gonna do THAT?!"

Suddenly, the door opened and in walked their father, fighting with his coat and dragging his briefcase along behind him with a grunt. "Boys, is Zelda with you?"

Kenji shook his head instantly. "Why would she be here with us?"

He shrugged, straightening his long black jacket and running a hand through his hair. "I dunno, she just walked off. Well, I just got an emergency call. Naoko Kurama, my superior, just faxed my boss and said she couldn't go on the trip she was scheduled for--her mother broke her leg, the poor woman--so Mr. Hashima's sending ME in her place to China in a half-hour. I have to catch the plane, but I wanted to wish her happy birthday again before I go and warn you two." He sighed, glancing at his watch, then up at the ceiling, and Kenji sensed that he was having another stressed-out melancholy moment. He had a lot of them. "God, she'll be furious...I hate leaving on her birthday..."

"You've done it before, Dad," Akira pointed out. "On her fifth birthday, and her ninth, tenth, eleventh, fourteenth and sixteenth, not to mention my twelfth, fourteenth, my senior graduation and Kenji's--OWW!"

The smaller boy cut him off with a pinch to the bicep, shutting him up as he observed the shameful look on their Dad's face. "Stupid, ZIP it!" he hissed.

"I know, guys, I'm sorry I miss so much..." he sighed. "I can't help it, you know that."

"We know Dad," Kenji assured him, "And Zelda will understand." //I don't think that's the worst of her problems right now anyway...//

"I know, it's just..." he trailed off again, lowering his eyes momentarily, then looked up at them. "You guys can handle things, right? For your sister?"

"Uh-huh, we got it!" Kenji said, quickly. "Better go catch that plane now, or your boss will have a fit!"

"Yeah, hurry, dad," Akira added. "Hey, bring her back something dangerous-- that'll make her happy."

"Like a sword."

"Or a panda."

Kenji shot Akira a look, then shook his head as the dolt shrugged, a sheepish grin on his face, but their father just smiled. "Okay, boys, I'm off then. Tell your sister I said happy birthday and I'm sorry."

"We will."

//If we can get her back,// Kenji thought. "Bye Dad."

With another weak smile, he was out the door, on his way to get to the airport, and both boys relaxed, then quickly set to work trying to think up a way to get Zelda back, Kenji thinking much harder than his brother.

"Oh geez, I better think something up fast, or Dad'll kill me."

"I just hope she doesn't get hurt," Akira sighed.

The smaller boy sighed, grabbing his goggles and a pair of pliers. "I just hope she doesn't go changing history! That's the LAST thing we need--a paradox involving the whole world!"

"Could she DO that?"

"With Zelda, NOTHING is ever certain, but I wouldn't put it past her."

Akira shrugged. "Well, at least she's just a girl. She can't do too much."

//He IS dumber than he looks,// Kenji thought. //I coulda sworn that was impossible...well, Zel, don't go messing up our universe, and hold on until I can get you back.//

****

End of Prologue

Xandra: I'm probably not gonna post this without the first chapter, because this one was a little dry. If you were wondering, Kenji's explanations about the theories of paradox and the rule of three are actual scientific principles (broken down) that I read about in a Piers Anthony book (that man is insane, but God is he smart). As for the calibrations of speed around the earth and the speed of light versus the speed of the planet's rotation, they are accurate--and let me tell you, my calculator is still complaining after that, as is my brain. Whew! Don't worry, there won't be much more of that. Review if you want, but no flaming, or you can wait until you read the first chapter (it's more interesting anyway). Thanx! ^_^