Cherry blossoms fluttered in the light breeze, landing in a pool of blood...

Hijikata's eyes snapped awake on the cot inside the basement where he and the other civilians from different times of history were imprisoned. He half expected Kenneth and his enforcers to have roused them already; typically around this time, they were brought to their designated areas to educate people of this time about their history. Every time he had to speak of the samurai, deep inside he seethed. Speaking of something he cared so much about to others who had no honor...

It made him sick.

There were others, of course, who seemed to hate it as much as he did. Since being here, he had learned bits and pieces of English, the language Kenneth all forced them to learn. Some, such as the soldier Joel, knew and spoke it well. Even one of the Chinese girls, Zhen, spoke it far better than he did. He was still in the process of learning but to him, it was a harsh language, not as elegant as Japanese. He hated it.

Joel was already sitting on the edge of his cot, glaring at him. At this point, Hijikata had come to expect his hostility for reasons he hadn't picked up on yet. In truth, he wasn't all fond of the American soldier either; it had been foreigners like him wanting to come into Japan's borders that had started the disputes that led to the Boshin War. That had brought about the end of the samurai and had killed everyone he cared about.

The ache of sorrow settled deep within his chest and it pulsed, flared up by the memories.

Boredom was a common occurrence here. As Commander of the Shinsengumi, Hijikata had become accustomed to constantly being on the move; writing letters, speaking with officials, training soldiers, planning their next move in the war... It had become an endless cycle of leading and commanding. Here, however, all he did was sleep, eat, stand and speak of history, answer whatever questions he could, only to repeat it all and do it again. It left him too much time to think about the past, dwelling on the sorrow.

A Mongolian woman with dark hair braided multiple times strolled over in between Hijikata and Joel's cots. She pointed to the door.

Joel nodded. "Kenneth's agents should have been here to take us upstairs by now. Is that what you meant, ma'am?"

"Khutulun," she stuttered out. "N—name."

"Your name is Khutulun?" Joel cocked his head up at her.

She nodded, her lips stretched into a thin line as she turned toward Hijikata and gestured to the two men.

"Name's Joel. Nice to meet you, ma'am." Joel held out a hand to her, but Khutulun simply stared at it before she grinned. Hijikata frowned as she grasped Joel's hand and squeezed it—tightly, judging by the look on the American soldier's face.

"Wait... what are you doing?" Joel pulled his hand away from her and stood up.

Khulutun frowned. "You... wrestle?"

"Arm wrestle?" Joel shook his head. "No way. Ain't no way I'm doin' that with a doll like you."

She simply shrugged and turned to Hijikata.

He wasn't entirely sure what all of the words Joel had spoken had been, but he inclined his head to her. "Hijikata."

"Hijikata," she tried to pronounce.

The Native American woman, Star if he remembered her name, walked over to them. "The wacishu do not have it in their hearts to let us rest. Where are they?"

Joel patted his cot for her to sit down, but she shook her head. "I'm not sure, ma'am. Something is definitely wrong, though. What do you think, Will?"

"Och, William. No' Will." On the other side of Joel's cot was a strange man with the brightest red hair Hijikata had ever seen. He also never understood much, if anything, of what William said. "I dinna ken."

Joel looked to Star as if she could translate but she shifted her eyes away from them and back toward the door. "Hey, hold on. Any of you know where Leo's at?"

*****

With a mirthless chuckle, Leonardo paced on the other side of the room by the doors. Being in this ridiculous basement made him feel trapped and he hated feeling trapped. More than that, he needed out, needed to explore, needed... adventure. Something he was severely lacking at the moment.

"The more you pester the guards, the worse off it will be for us," said a rich noblewoman sitting with her legs properly crossed on a cot to his right.

Leo stopped mid-stride, sizing her up. The jewels around her neck appeared priceless and would no doubt sell for a hefty price. With her straight black hair, curvy body, and refined features, she was a beautiful woman. He wouldn't have minded stealing her things in the slightest. Only problem was, where would he sell it? It wasn't as if he was about to escape from this prison anytime soon.

"Please, I would appreciate it if you wouldn't stare at me like that." She pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes on him.

He couldn't stop the smirk that spread over his face. "Like what, Lady...?"

"I am Mary, Queen of Scots."

With that, he pretended to bow in an over-exaggerated manner. "Well, in that case... your majesty..."

"You are deplorable." Mary's glare could intimidate lesser men but Leo only found it amusing. Beautiful and fiery, he thought to himself.

*****

To occupy herself, Zhen lay on her stomach on the floor in preparation for back bending. To her surprise, she was quickly able to find a lone corner in the back of the room where she could be out of everyone's way. She hated crowded spaces and large crowds; after surviving the massacre at Tiananmen Square, anytime she gathered with many people, she could almost hear the gunshots and see the wounded and dying bodies falling all around her.

Slowly and gracefully, she bent her feet forward, toward her head and placed her feet upon her shoulders. Carefully, she moved them upward and placed both of her feet flat on the cold stone floor in front of her head, so that her face peaked in between her legs. After training as a Chinese acrobat and contortionist since she was a little girl, her muscles no longer ached at bending her body in such a way.

"You move your body like it was water in a river," a deep male voice murmured. It wasn't Mandarin or Cantonese directly, but a Banlam dialect from Southeast Asia called Hokkien. Zhen glanced up to see an able-bodied Chinese man with the appearance of someone from Southeast Asia, matching his dialect.

Zhen only knew a little Hokkien, so she slipped her body back to normal and bowed to him formally. "Thank you," she tried.

"I am Zheng Chenggong."

Zhen frowned, unsure how her name would translate over. She decided to go ahead and pronounce it in Mandarin, the language she was most comfortable with. "Zhen Wu."

"You appear to be a skilled acrobat. Since it's quite dull here, perhaps you could show me more at another time?"

Zhen nodded to him with a nervous smile. It had been several years since she performed for anyone and in this place, there were so many other people from many different periods of time.

If she guessed right, it was nearly time for the agents to take them to the National Museum upstairs, and yet they weren't here yet. "Excuse me," she said to Zheng politely. She darted across the room to the six people whose cots were next to her own.

"Do you know what is going on?" she asked in English.

*****

More than anything, Star wanted to be outside again. Her feet had not touched the precious earth in many seasons. In truth, she had no idea how many winters or summers had passed since she had been sent to this mysterious and strange future.

"Do you know what is going on?" the strange white woman with slanted eyes asked. Her white name is Zhen, Star thought to herself.

"No, ma'am," Joel said politely. For one of the wasichu, he had a far kinder heart and truthfully, Star enjoyed the joy that followed him like rays of light following the sun.

"Gents!" Leonardo, the rowdy one, dashed toward their group of seven misfits. It reminded Star of the story of the coyote trying to trick the rabbit and the elk to befriend him. "The Museum has been closed. From what we gather, the agents are all gone, not even a guard at the door," he said.

Khutulun, Joel, Hijikata, Zhen, and William all exchanged a glance.

"Chance to escape!" Khutulun did not speak the white man's tongue as well as the others.

Hijikata shook his head. "There are many women and children here. It would be best if we could shirabemasu..." He paused as if trying to think of the white man word.

"Aye. I ken yer words, lad," said William as he stood from his cot. "We cannae escape 'till we ken why the soldiers are no' at their posts."

Star lost sense of their words, but she swallowed deeply from what she did understand. Escape. Home. At last, perhaps she could return to be with what little of her people remained living.

*****

As much as Joel hated working with the filthy Jap, he agreed for now only because they needed to work together. Leonardo, being a pirate, had quickly learned how to lockpick, after only being here at the museum for a week. It let them out of the basement, at least, so Joel pushed his surprise aside.

When they stepped into the museum, he quickly realized that he had been right all along; something was really wrong. The agents were nowhere to be found and if he didn't know any better, he would say the museum seemed closed. Why would Kenneth close the place? He's obsessed with history, Joel thought.

Then, a second, horrifying thought occurred to him. "Kenneth would never shut down the place," he said.

The dirty Jap Hijikata, William the Scotsman, Star the Native American woman, Zhen the young Chinese lady, Khutulun the Mongolian warrior, and Leo the pirate all turned to look at him.

To his surprise, it was Star who answered. "You are right. His heart is filled with greed."

"Something caused them to leave, then," Hijikata said. "Demo, what?"

Leo shook his head. "As many times as they have pulled one of us from history..."

Joel nodded in agreement as he crossed his arms over his chest. "I never believed time travel could be real, but now that it is... Doing all of this must have had its consequences."

Zhen blinked back tears out of her eyes. "Do you mean that there might be nowhere for us to travel back to?"

Joel looked down at the ground.

"Dinna ken," William muttered. "What o' their machine, t'one tha' took us here?"

"The time machine," said Joel, meeting the redheaded Scotman's gaze. "If something in history was messed up, then we have a chance to fix it."

"Where is it?" Hijikata frowned, looking as if he had eaten something sour.

Joel wanted to knock his lights out, but he settled for ignoring the Jap instead.

"This way. I've been taken by it several times when they brought me to the disciplinary chamber." Leo smirked and led them up a stairway and down another hallway toward the back of the museum.

"You sure you know where you're going, pirate?" Joel glanced at Leo as they took the lead in front of the other four.

Leo paused and gaped at him. "Pirate. Navigator on the sea. Of course, I know where I'm going."

*****

Being around all the men wasn't why Khutulun felt intimidated or frustrated. No, it all came down to the simple fact that she couldn't speak as they did and didn't understand most of what was going on. Then again, understanding the strange, guttural language was easier than speaking it. She hated sounding like a child whose head had been hit at birth. One of her many cousins had spoken in a similar way and she had always found him annoying. Now, she sounded just like him.

The machine that they spoke of, the one that had brought them from their time and thrown them into this mysterious future looked similar to the pens her people kept their horses in. Rather than wooden fences, however, it was made entirely of glass, except for a table with many buttons on it that Khutulun had never seen before.

"Here goes nothin'," Joel said, stepping through the machine's door.

Leo followed him, so Khutulun hurried in front of Hijikata as William, Star, and Zhen trailed behind them.

"Do you know how to work this thing?" Leo asked Joel.

Khutulun tried to keep track of what they were talking about, but she couldn't follow all of their words. Joel and Leo appeared to be arguing and she caught on to Leo saying something about how he had sailed a ship with ease. In the end, they used the control panel together.

A loud buzzing sound hummed across the entire room and Khutulun held her hands over her ears. It spun viciously as the wind picked up and she was certain she was in the middle of a storm.

Khutulun squeezed her eyes shut until it was over.

*****

William couldnae have been happier than when t'machine stopped its spinnin' and t'seven o' 'em trekked through one o' t'three doors tha' had appeared 'afore 'em. "Och, glad that's over," he muttered. His feet crunched piles o' leaves on the ground. T'land looked like a bog near one of the lochs back in Scotland.

T'thought o' his homeland made his stomach twist in bitterness and anger.

"Where are we?" Hijikata asked, gaze sharp like a dirk.

"I dinna ken." William shrugged.

"When are we," Leo corrected.

"According to this," started Joel, "about 130 million years ago."

Everyone, including William, stared at the poor lad as if he'd lost his mind. William would o' suspected he had, if not fer the machine tha' had pulled him from his own time period.

"The dinosaur era," Zhen murmured softly in an Asian accent. "Yes?"

Joel nodded. "Yes, ma'am, I think so. Something must have gone wrong here."

"Aye," William agreed. "But what?"

*****

From what Zhen knew of dinosaurs, they had gone extinct 66 million years ago, which meant they were far earlier than that. As they walked through the woods, being careful not to wander for fear of getting lost, Leo took the lead, being the pirate and explorer. He appeared as giddy as a young child eating his favorite meal.

"How many of these creatures exist?" Hijikata, like William, Star, and Khutulun stared at their environment with mixtures of shock and awe. Zhen realized that whatever eras they had come from—the 19th, 18th, and 13th centuries if she remembered correctly—they had probably never even heard of dinosaurs before.

Zhen shook her head. "No one knows. We are only just now learning of them," she answered politely.

Joel nodded. "Yeah, not too much was known back in my time."

They walked in a dense jungle with large leaves and many insects far larger than Zhen cared for. In the distance, behemoths with long necks towered high above the trees and she suspected that they as humans were not even the size of the creatures' feet. "I remember those," she said, pointing to the long necks. "Sorry. I do not remember what they are called."

"Those." With a smile, Joel pointed to their right, where a group of six other dinosaurs lapped water from a large river. They had bony plates upon their back, the size of ancient shields.

"Stegosaurus," Zhen murmured. "I remember those."

"The air is so fresh." Star closed her eyes and twirled around as she deeply inhaled.

"Och, I wouldna go near the water, lads and lasses..." William stared at the river in shock. "She's a loch ness monster."

Zhen frowned at him, casting her eyes to the river. All of the Stegosauruses leapt out of the way as a fin rose out of the water. Its massive body was twice their size with a sail on its back, like a sea serpent with legs and claws.

"I suggest we hide," Hijikata muttered. They all hid behind two different trees, all of which were far thicker than the ones Zhen recognized from China. It was odd seeing a place so empty and void of humans, with no cities, only countryside and dinosaurs in sight.

Joel and William stayed on either side of her on the edge of the tree, leaving Leo, Hijikata, Khutulun, and Star behind another one.

"How are we supposed to know if anything's wrong here, doll?" Joel asked her in a whisper.

Zhen shook her head. She wished she could remember more about dinosaurs, anything to help but she couldn't. "Sorry. I do not know." At the sound of squelching and tearing flesh, she squeezed her eyes shut.

"Don't look, doll," Joel murmured softly.

She had suspicions that the dinosaur with the sail on its back had attacked and was eating one of the Stegosauruses, so she obeyed Joel and refused to look.

*****

After the dino that William had called the loch ness monster finished its meal and left, Joel and his six companions made their way back to the time machine. He and Leo had figured out based on the controls, which worked similar to an old typewriter—except the letters hovered in the air—that the machine itself could scan the area for information, almost like radar.

"According to this, the ecosystem in the area seems to be fine," Joel read from the words written in the air. If he didn't know it was a technology called holos, he would have said it was some sort of magic. His head hurt; the future was too much for him to handle, and saving history was even worse.

"What does that mean?" Zhen stood behind him, making his hands clammy. He wasn't doll dizzy by any chance, but she was quite a honey.

He shrugged. "Far as I can tell, ma'am, it means this area we're in doesn't have anything out of order."

"Wait," Zhen murmured, pointing to a paragraph farther down.

Joel fumbled with the holo controls in the air for a moment, trying to figure out how to make it scroll down.

Zhen lightly giggled and glanced at him. "May I try?" she asked in her sweet, Chinese accent.

He gestured to the holo. "Yes, ma'am."

She gracefully slid a slender finger along the words in the air and it scrolled it down. "There."

"Thank you." Joel nodded to her and quickly read it. "Oh, no," he murmured.

"What is it?" the dirty Jap, Hijikata, asked.

Joel ignored him and met Zhen's gaze. "On their last trip here last month, the time machine recorded over two hundred of these small chipmunk-like mammals, according to the logs. Now, this data is saying that there is only about half a dozen of them left."

"If we want to help the historic timeline, then there is where we start," Leo said.

"Yes," Zhen started, "but how do we keep it safe without doing further harm by interfering?"

The dirty Jap nodded. "Hai. Perhaps leaving is the best solution."

Joel narrowed his eyes at the Jap, balling his hands into fists. Taking a deep breath, he shifted his attention to the screen, where he read through the rest of the data report and then other older logs before he explained what he'd learned to the others. "Kenneth knew that the least little thing they did could mess up all of history, no matter the era. Two hundred animals suddenly down to just six? Could be why everything is different. It could keep us all from going home."

"We must help!" Khutulun looked at each of them in turn. Slowly, the other five agreed and they left the time machine once again to see what they could do.

*****

Though this earth was not Star's home back in Paha Sapa, being outside once again brought relief to Star's heart that she had not felt since the whites had attacked her people and stolen their ancestral lands. It was far hotter here as if it was in the middle of the hottest summer Star had ever experienced.

Along their journey, Star and Leo used what they both knew of the outdoors and Leo's expertise navigating new and unfamiliar territories to help them avoid danger. They paused to hide as one of the larger creatures stomped by with its sharp teeth seeking something to eat. Once it had passed, they continued their journey.

"Here." Star knelt down beside a small burrow, perfect for the size of the animal Joel had described. "There are different tracks here," she continued, looking at the dirt around it. "Two large, two medium, and two smaller ones. This is a family."

"How are we supposed to keep the last living family of a species alive?" Joel glanced at her and met Zhen's slanted eyes.

Zhen pursed her lips. "What caused them to die? Once we fix it..."

Joel nodded. "Then we've saved them."

Star glanced back inside the burrow to see two small beading eyes staring back at her. She smiled, wanting to interact with the animal, but her heart knew it was best to leave it be. Whites had interfered and many of the buffalo had died as a result of their greed. It was happening all over again. In a different time with different whites, but the white man's greed and selfish desires made her heart heavy. "It eats insects," she said, glancing at the others.

While she was on her knees, Star took a moment to peer at the plants in the area. She found some of the insects crawling on a particular kind of five-leafed shrub close to the ground. After looking for a long time, she realized that there were only a few more plants like it.

"What do you see?" Zhen asked her.

Star pointed to the plant and the others like it. "They eat the insects that live on these plants. Something has caused them to die."

Khutulun nodded. "No food. Death follows," she murmured.

"Hai," Hijikata agreed.

"How do we keep the plant alive?" Joel asked.

Star gestured to the insects. "They will give life quickly like the rabbits do. If we save the plant, then these animals will have food to eat. What has caused the plant to die?"

"Lass, I think yer onto somethin' here." William knelt down beside her and grabbed a blackened root that had blended in with the dirt. "Kenneth, that gomerel. When t'soldiers came ta my time, many o' t'crops died. This was left behind. It caused a wee bit of a stramash."

"So the time machine destroyed them?" Joel asked.

"Aye." William stayed where he was and glanced at Star. For a moment, she stared at his bright red hair, like the fur of a fox.

"If we leave, how do we know that the plants will survive or that the mammals will?" Zhen crossed her arms tensely.

Star gently touched the plants in the ground. "The roots of these plants can be separated, which will make more of them grow."

"Can ye do it wi'out killin' the insects, lass?" William asked.

Star glanced down at them. Replanting would be a risk, but she had done it before. Her mother and grandmother had taught her. Oh, Great Spirit, she silently prayed. What should I do?

*****

"Is i' done?" William asked, glancin' at Star. He had tae admit tha' she was a bonny lass.

Star nodded. "Yes. Each of the plants are back in the earth so that their roots can grow. I have prayed to the Great Spirit, that he may help them."

"What do we do now?" Zhen asked.

William held out a hand for Star that she took and stood to her feet.

"We use the time machine to help the smaller mammals, the insects, and the plants regrow quicker," Joel suggested.

William, Star, Hijikata, Khutulun, Leo, and Zhen all looked at him in surprise. "How, lad?" William asked.

*****

Hijikata wasn't entirely sure of Joel's plan, but with time travel and mysteries he barely understood, it wasn't as if they had time to come up with better strategies if there were any.

Joel glanced at the six companions. "When Leo and I were learning the controls of the time machine, I figured out that there's a way of creating... a time loop of sorts."

"What're ye talkin' aboot, lad?" William cocked his head, shaking red curls out of his eyes.

"We can use the time machine to give them the time they need to safely repopulate. The mammals, the insects, and the plants," Joel explained.

"The plants and animals will need water," Star pointed out.

Joel gestured to the machine. "It has an automatic system using those holos to turn on sprinklers if needed. We can set those."

"Are you certain this will work?" Zhen bit her lower lip nervously.

Joel nodded. Together, he, Leo, and Zhen all worked together to catch the animals and place them in the time machine, while William helped Star cut a square of the earth out that contained the plant roots, along with the few insects on that single plant. They loaded it all up into the time machine and Joel and Leo used the controls to set the time loop to what they needed it to be.

This entire situation was far beyond Hijikata's knowledge. He was completely out of his element with little understanding as to what they should or should not do. "I hope this works," he muttered in Japanese.

As if she understood him, Khutulun placed a hand upon his shoulder and nodded to him once. "It will," she whispered in her fractured English accent.

The time machine only appeared to be gone for a few minutes. When it returned, nothing in the ancient time period they stood in had changed. Yet when Joel opened the doors...

Dozens of the tiny mammals burst out. Star laughed as she darted inside, where she carefully worked with William to replant the hundreds of plants and roots that had regrown. Insects crawled along each of their leaves.

"We did it!" Zhen shouted happily, smiling at Joel.

Hijikata and Khutulun exchanged a glance and her lips shifted up into a smile. She squeezed his arm and nodded to him, as if saying, see? I told you. For all the joy around him, Hijikata couldn't stop the feeling of dread oozing through him. Perhaps it was the war, all the losses he had faced after witnessing the deaths of each of his comrades, men who had been like brothers to him.

He simply couldn't shake the feeling that even if they had fixed this era in history, something else, perhaps many more timelines were the same way. There was no guarantee that they could fix them all. Besides, after all they knew, would they truly be able to go home? To their own times? With Japan changed, the samurai gone, did he even have a home to return to?

What was going to happen to him? To all of them?