Setsuna Meiou had, for a long time, held the position of Sailor Pluto, Senshi of Time. With the ability to see into the future, it was her duty to watch for upcoming threats, and to prepare the Moon Princess and her court to meet them and remain safe,
Sometimes - a lot of the time, now - she hated it.
The Moon Princess would become a Queen - it was Sailor Pluto's duty to make sure of that. She could see the future clearly; there was really only one path to get there, and it was almost certain now. She'd been working guiding events toward that path for a long time. But there was one obstacle she didn't like to think about.
An enemy would come to Earth, some time in the future. They'd beat it; Setsuna was quite sure of that. She'd seen the solution while looking at the possible results of the battle. But they needed to protect the Earth while it healed, and so the Princess would freeze the whole world for a thousand years. The Earth and its people would sleep, and the Earth would heal - but the reason Setsuna didn't like to think about it was that most of the people wouldn't. Crystal Tokyo would rise, and Neo-Queen Serenity would reign - but though she would rule the entire world, they would be merely a handful of the billions who once lived there.
She'd looked for other options, of course. But now that she knew about the possibility of freezing the world, it became that much more likely that it would happen. Even if she didn't suggest it to Usagi, Ami would come up with the idea. Setsuna had decided after looking at that future that she'd do it herself; she could deal better with the guilt than Ami could. She'd been getting a lot of practice since then, because she couldn't find anything better with any chance of working.
For a while, she'd even looked through the forest of fringe possibilities, out on the edges of off-chance and unlikely coincidence. Gods, aliens, secret government agencies - but if any existed, they'd shown no interest in the Senshi's battles so far , and weren't likely to start now. Even if they did, they were more often hostile than helpful, and many of the helpful ones would only become that way after some ridiculous coincidence. When she found herself considering whether she could arrange events so that a randomly-chosen human could beat a flying alien in a game of tag, Setsuna had given up on those futures.
But now, out among the futures where the Princess hadn't frozen the Earth and the battle had left it dead and barren, one shone with life. Something had changed, and looking back over the timeline, Setsuna traced it back to Ranma Saotome - the sort of person she hated to deal with, surrounded by so much chaos that it was almost impossible to make sense of the possibilities where they were involved. He had a hero's instincts, always helping out when he was needed, but in many futures the chaos that was his life would prevent him ever really fulfilling that potential.
Not in this one, however. While Ranma would have the will to help the Senshi defeat their enemy without having to freeze the Earth, he'd recently met a young woman whose technological wizardy could provide the way. Even better, as they had married shortly thereafter, they would still be together when the enemy arrived - and Ranma would stay and fight rather than retreat to Jade or anywhere else for safety, which meant his wife would join him,
Such a future was by no means assured, of course. With new and powerful allies came new and deadly enemies, and there were still those who would try to separate Ranma and his wife. But Ranma had risen to the challenge of powerful enemies before and emerged stronger for it, and the circumstances of his meeting Brianna made the two of them something not unlike a Fated Couple; supporting such things would be much easier than making sure that Ataru Moroboshi would be randomly chosen from the entire population of the Earth. Besides, Setsuna had already watched over a Fated Couple that at first had seemed much less likely than this one.
Setsuna wanted very badly to not have to suggest a plan that would kill most of the Earth's population, and she knew that this meant she couldn't look at it objectively. It would also change (at least partly) the destiny the other Senshi had come to expect, and her Princess had a right to know that. On the other hand, it would save billions of lives... if it worked. If the plan failed, the Senshi might not have time to try anything else.
Which is why she'd called the Senshi together, and explained the choices to them. She waited for a reaction, which wasn't long in coming.
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(Posted Mon, 21 Jul 2003 15:09)
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