That wasn't the situation that Setsuna saw as she looked in on the Saotome family through the Time Gate. In this timeline, there wasn't such a tiny family group that had the mother left totally alone as the only two male Saotomes went off on a training journey. There was family here, and it came from the 'real' Senshi.
Haruka Ten'ou was Haruka Saotome here, and was Ranma's sister. The new timeline had her as having trouble with men not only due to the constant arrogance and mocking that she got from those that couldn't handle a girl trying to get into the areas that they considered 'male only' and beating them. Added into that was a deep seated anger at her father for abandoning and ignoring her so that he could take Ranma on the training journey. She had no respect for her male parent, and was even glad that she'd gotten her hair color from one of her mother's parents.
When she'd been reunited with her brother, she'd been ready to despise him as both the one who'd gotten the 'special care' and had left on that trip. However, she'd been in for a rather pleasant surprise when it turned out that Ranma had as little respect for their father as she did. Plus, he even seemed to like the idea of having a sister who wasn't into frilly stuff and who he could share a lot of stuff he understood with. He even pronounced her interest in motorcycle racing as being 'cool', which won him a lot of points with her.
Of course, there was a definite rivalry between the pair, as neither were the sort to not compete when they could.
She wasn't the only sister either, as there was a younger sister. Almost immediately, Ranma had a reaction to this girl, who he saw in a very particular light. If nothing else, he was going to fall back on hard reactions when considering certain situations that the girl in question could get into. Nothing was going to stop him when he had to deal with that though, and he consciously thought that this would not be something that he'd want to ever stop.
"Freak!"
Hotaru shrank against the property wall of the house she'd been passing when the three older students had come at her. They were not totally unusual, which she knew much to her sadness.
"Looks like the weirdo is scared," mocked the boy who'd made the 'freak' comment.
One of the other two boys with him sneered at the violet eyed girl. "Maybe she knows what's supposed to happen to her."
"What I can't believe is that she thinks that she can pretend that she's not strange," scoffed the girl of the trio.
"Please...." Hotaru murmured. "I just want to go home...."
"You'll go when we let you! A little nothing like you needs to be watched over."
"I've got to go...."
"To where?" the first boy sarcastically asked. "It's not like you have anywhere better to be."
"Yeah. I mean, it's not like you have that much going for you in the first place," the second boy cruelly drawled.
The older girl's lip curled up into a nasty smirk. "And it's not like you'd be worth getting anything to do. Your father obviously thinks so, or you wouldn't have been abandoned by him, right?"
"That's not right," Hotaru retorted weakly, burned by fear and a lack of self confidence.
"Are you correcting me?"
"You shouldn't be doing this."
"Why not? Because your precious big sister, the man-woman, would come to teach us a lesson."
"She'd just want to protect me from bullies...."
"Are you calling me a name?" growled the girl, letting a hand tighten into a fist. "I'm going to show you what that gets you!"
Realizing what that meant, Hotaru closed her eyes, and braced herself for a hit.... before a familiar voice interrupted, at which point she opened her eyes in surprise. "I don't think that ya wanna ta do that."
All three of the bullies looked up to see a teenaged boy crouching on the property wall, and the boy who'd hurled the first insult was the first to speak. "Is that so?"
"Yeah, basically."
"And who are you to start telling us what to do?"
Getting lazily up to a standing position, the pigtailed boy on the wall leapt off of it, did a twirl in the air, and landed on his feet between them and their chosen victim.
"Big brother!" Hotaru gasped in pleasure.
"Hey, Hotaru," the teen replied with a small grin.
"Oh, great. Another sibling for the freak," groaned the bully girl.
"Don't call her that."
"Why not? She's just a weird little girl with no body, strange behavior, and a need to stay alone in the corner."
"Better that than bein' some sort of psycho brute."
"WHAT?!" the older girl shrieked.
"Ya went after a girl who can't fight back, and ya did it with two boys. Seems that either you're some sort of overly violent gorilla, or you're a scared little girl who can't let someone else be. Which are ya?"
"Neither!"
"Then why go after Hotaru?"
"Because we want to!"
"Besides," the second boy muttered. "What can you do if we don't stop?"
Smirking slightly, Ranma made a fist with one hand and let it snap out to smack into the property wall. The hit made a definite dent in the bricks, with pieces of stone and mortar falling to the ground like a heavy rain. A spiderweb pattern of cracks radiated out from the site of where his hand had made contact with the wall, and that came from an easy punch.
Upon seeing that, the three bullies stared at the boy who'd done it, and swallowed hard.
"Now, d'ya think that ya can forget this, or am I gonna have ta see 'bout hangin' ya from the nearest flagpoles by your underpants?" the pigtailed boy asked.
Hearing that was all the bullies needed to start them off on their attempts to put as much distance between them and this boy as possible.
"Big brother?" Hotaru whispered softly.
Ranma turned to look at her. "Hm?"
"Were you really going to hurt them to protect me?"
"I'd rather not do that if I didn't have ta...."
"Oh, that's...."
"What I hoped would happen. Though, if they didn't give up, I'd have ta at least teach them a little lesson. Ain't gonna be a single person that I'd let hurt my little sister."
Sniffling a bit, the sister in question rushed up and gave him the strongest hug that she could manage.
"What's this 'bout?"
"You being the best brother ever."
"Huh?" he answered, blushing a bit in embarrassment as he scratched his head nervously. "I ain't that great."
"You are."
"If ya say so. Who am I ta argue with a pretty girl?"
"Ranma...."
"Let's get outta here, 'kay?" he told her, using one hand to muss her hair fondly.
Looking up at him, she gave a firm little nod. "Okay!"
Setsuna watched the exchange and found herself unable to ignore the hero worship that Hotaru had for her older brother. It was clear that she thought the world of him, and had a life with a lot more brightness in it. With both Haruka and Ranma around, there was little chance that the violet eyed girl would be teased in the long term.
Still, that left Setsuna with a whole lot of questions, as she understood that this was not the end of it. There were other Senshi to account for, and she wasn't about to leave that up in the air. They were the ones that she was really looking for at the moment, and ignoring their situations wasn't exactly what she'd planned on doing.
Turning her attention from the specific incident that she'd watched, she looked to see that:
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