"I do, but you don't have to worry about that," Makoto replied.
"That's good to hear. Mind if I come in."
"Oh! Of course not. This is a good time to have friends over."
The older woman raised a brow as she stepped into the apartment and headed into the kitchen with the resident. "It is?"
"Certainly is."
"Now you have me curious."
"As if you didn't know," Rei murmured, with an undertone of deep bemusement.
"Hmm?"
"Come on now. You didn't just come here on a whim, did you?"
"Why wouldn't I?"
"Because you, of all people, could always find a way to be there when it's important."
"And I take it that this is important," the Senshi of Time commented as she took the cup of tea that Makoto was offering her.
"You don't know what's happening?" Ami asked.
"I'm still waiting for someone to tell me what's so important that you're all excited."
Grinning broadly, Usagi leaned forward. "Mako-chan's husband is coming back to Tokyo!"
"That is good news," the green haired woman responded with an approving smile before she sipped her drink. "But I don't know why I would know anything about it."
The shrine priestess crossed her arms over her chest and frowned thoughtfully at the Time Senshi. "You do have the Time Gate, right?"
"You could say something like that."
"Then why wouldn't you be able to see when he would come back."
"I didn't think to look. Why didn't you see this in your sacred fire?"
"Well...." Rei gave a wince, and reluctantly nodded at the point. "I didn't really think of it either. But that is never really something that's precise. I get images, but nothing concrete. But you have the Gate, and have been to the future."
"And I stay out of your romantic lives, if I can avoid it."
Minako seemed to be rather concerned at that, as her brows drew together. "You have been involved in our romances?"
"I never did like the explanation that Mamoru, that future version," Rei grumbled, "gave for his giving his current self those nightmares. I mean, to 'test their love'?"
Setsuna sighed, and pinched the bridge of her nose. "That wasn't exactly it."
"It wasn't?"
"No, but then Endymion was never the best at explaining the nuances of what can go on through the time stream. You see, it was a sort of test, but of the kind that would let the two of them know what their love was really like. They had to have the strength to know the strength of it, and that no matter what might happen between them, they would be still have each other's love."
"And the rest of us?" the Senshi of Love asked. "Are we going to get guys of our own?"
"I could tell you that you'll find men worthy of your love, and who will return your feelings."
"Really?!"
"And I could also tell you that you won't have anyone, and will have to find physical connections in other ways."
"Huh? That doesn't sound good...."
"True, but to be honest, I really can't tell you anything. Certainly nothing about what will happen in your romances," the Time Guardian said with a shrug.
"Why not?"
"Because...."
"Paradox," Ami murmured.
"Very good."
Looking from the Senshi of Pluto to the one of Mercury, and back again, the reincarnated princess blinked. "What's that mean?"
"It's really quite simple."
"If she tells us that we have some sort of great romance, then we would expect that, and go for whomever she let us know would be the 'one' for us. But then things wouldn't go as she remembered them, and we could mess up what would probably be our 'great' love," the cram school student sighed.
"On the other hand, if I were to tell you that you girls weren't going to get any long term relationships with a guy, then you wouldn't try, and you would make that come true, even if a chance were to come up in the mean time. Not to mention how you would change your behavior if you felt that it wouldn't work for you anyway."
"And either way, we could mess up the future. The thing is that what she knows is based on what the timeline is like now. If we do anything to change it, and that changes the information that she can get. And if the future changes, then what she can tell us changes, but that makes it so that she couldn't inform us of what things were like before the change. Which would mean that we wouldn't have the reasons to do what we did to change it in the first place...."
"Sounds.... messy," Makoto put in. "What would happen then?"
"People have been trying to figure that out for a long time, Mako-chan. No one has ever figured it out."
"That's why temporal mechanics are so problematic," Setsuna admitted. "It's a major problem that has to be avoided."
"Then why let Chibi-usa back?" Rei asked.
"She couldn't stop it. Once Chibi-usa came here, then that made things as they are. Without her coming to this time, then there would likely have been no 'Crystal Tokyo'. Without 'Crystal Tokyo', there probably wouldn't have been a Chibi-usa to come back." Ami gave a shake of her head. "The timeline is stable right now, and to stop Chibi-usa's time travel would have rather... 'messy' consequences."
"But if we could have boyfriends in the future, why didn't we see them when we went there?" Minako asked.
A small bemused smile curved Setsuna's lips. "Did you think to look?"
"Well... no...."
"Exactly. You were in a war torn city, with a mission to accomplish, and enemies to face. No one told you about any romance in your future, and you didn't know to look. Now, in a city full of people, how likely do you think it would be that anyone that you love would be just... waiting around. Either they'd want to fight, or they'd be moved to where they could be safe. Not that you would be alerted to where they were. Or even that they existed."
"Oh...."
"I do find it astonishing though. Did you girls really think that simply because you haven't had a lot of long term boyfriends that you wouldn't have any romance?"
Minako pouted slightly. "Usagi has Mamoru...."
"And do you know how rare that is? They are a couple whose love transcends time. Then there are Haruka and Michiru."
"And Makoto and Ranma," Usagi observed softly.
"Each couple has their own special bond. You're young women, and you have a long time to find whomever would be the right partner for you."
"Really?" the Senshi of Venus said, hope tinging her voice.
"Really. I mean, come on. What did you think would happen? That if you didn't get a male companion by the age of sixteen that you would have to live in some sort of lesbian group sexual frustration release arrangement?"
Both of Rei's hands slapped down on the table in front of her. "How can you say that?! Or even think it?!"
Setsuna merely glanced from her to another of the girls.
"What?" Usagi asked, looking confused.
"Yeah," the Senshi of Fire grumbled. "Why would you look to.... OH NO! I am so NOT going there!"
The giggles from Minako, Makoto, and Ami joined with the ones from Setsuna at that moment, while:
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(Posted Sat, 10 Dec 2005 23:07)
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