This was not good. In one of them she had foreseen herself becoming much like the average Nerima residence, being consumed entirely by her goal of eliminating Ranma and losing track of everything else in the process. In at least one potential future, that apparently included her sanity.
Sailor Pluto considered all the other possibilities, ignoring the dragon chuckling nearby. You couldn't use the Gates Of Time for such a thing, they had been constructed to prevent paradox and limit the timeline diversity into something manageable. To view alternate timelines required something entirely different.
Which she'd found years ago in a sub-universe that translated to 3-D senses as a sort of Greek ampitheatre surrounding a large well, though the big screen TV was a new addition. This then was Mimir's Well, one of several places where reality as it was commonly thought of - was thin for lack of a better term. This particular place one could look in and see the consequences of action, and how the events chained thereafter.
Take a very simple event. A change of 0.0001% in course was inconsequential to a garden snail. To a comet that hit the Tunguska region of Russia, it meant missing that world entirely. An asteroid that skimmed the atmosphere over the American Northwest in 1965, with a 0.0000001% change in velocity instead made a sizable impact crater out of the city of Seattle.
In most human interactions, a single decision most often had little consequence. In some of those interactions, it had ramifications for a lifetime. The chance just missed. The words spoken that the speaker immediately wished they could be retracted. The straw that broke the camel's back.
This was a danger of the Well. One who watched their own decisions could quickly lose confidence, putting off decisions until every analysis was done. Commitments became something to dread. Overthinking a problem as one consulted the Well. The best way to do it was set it on Voice Response and suggest three possibilities. The Well responded then, in the asker's own voice - as from one of the time threads resulting. Of course, sometimes the asker ended up with an endless series of followup questions.
Hence the Dragon. One could only spend so much time before the Well before the Dragon grew upset. Upset dragons were, on the whole, something to be avoided when possible. While it was certainly possible to slay a dragon, when the dragon was the appointed guardian of a Class I Magical Artifact, one would also have to deal with those who had done the appointing.
More trouble that, quite frankly, she didn't need. Nope.
Given her three questions, or approaches to the problems, she had quickly decided that killing Ranma to prevent his path crossing that of the Senshi was a path best not taken.
Likewise the throwing of one roadblock after another was a problem waiting to explode in her face. Their fates had become linked. Ranma's path would cross that of the Senshi in one shape or form. Some of those shapes or forms were distorted darn near beyond all recognition, but it remained that in the three approaches she'd been allowed to view - disaster fell every time she tried to purify the timeline.
Finding the proper arch, the Lonely Sentinel stepped through into the proper reality and then to the Gates Of Time. There was only one path where the damage could be contained. Oddly enough, it was a martial arts approach. Take the momentum and use it to your own advantage.
So, if she couldn't keep him out of the path of the Senshi, she could try something else. Some different approach. Sooner or later he'd end up meeting at least one Senshi so she had to work around that angle.
Fortunately, she had an idea.
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(Posted Tue, 04 Jan 2005 08:58)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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